I'm confused by a message in "System Preferences"

[*old-guy*]

OK, I'll admit that it doesn't take much to confuse me, lol
I clicked the apple at top left of the screen and then on System Preferences aver. My intention being to change the time interval between my inactivity and things stopping working on the laptop.
But then I noticed a message at the bottom of the page with a sort of On/Off option. It said..........
"Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible"

Any idea what that means? 10 minutes? An hour?

 

[themoonisdown09]

It means just that. It will put the hard disks to sleep after the specified minutes/hours with no hard drive activity. I have this feature turned on because it saves power.

 

[rdowns]

It stops the hard drive from spinning, which as mentioned, will save battery power. If you're plugged in most of the time don't bother with it.

 

[xUKHCx]

In Leopard the default on my iMac is 10 minutes as seen from the last value on the screenshote below



If you are running an earlier OS then I believe it is called spindown.

To findout what your time is set to open terminal in your utilities folder and type "pmset -g" without the quotes.

 

[*old-guy*]

Thanks, Guys.
I'll tick the box then.