LaCie External Hard Drive: Wake / Sleep Problem

[martinvanderhof]

I'm on an early 2008 mac pro - used to be on a Powerbook G4. I have a 300 GB LaCie d2 Extreme external HD connected via firewire 800. Both are in 10.5.2.

While on my powerbook, the drive behaved normally - fell asleep after no use, then awakened when I needed to access something.

On my new mac pro, the drive behaves strangely. I only use it for backup, so it's only accessed once a day. The rest of the time I do not use it. When it's not in use, the drive sporadically wakes and sleeps. I've tried to pinpoint the cause to no avail.

I've tried all the usual suspects: browsing the forums, checking the "hard disk sleep" preference in energy saver, switching the firewire 800 cable with usb and firewire 400, watching activity monitor to see if there's a program accessing the drive (haven't found anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there). None of it works.

Suggestions, anyone? Thanks for your help.

Cheers!

 

[martinlk]

As far as I know, the "put hard hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option has no effect on external drives, but only internal drives. It is the controller in your external enclosure that "sets a bit" on your hard drive, causing it to sleep after a period of inactivity. You cannot change this from within OS X unless the manufacturer provided some kind of utility.

If you have problems with your drive waking too often it is probably because the OS tries to access it frequently. I have en external firewire 800 drive myself, and it also wakes more often than I'd like--e.g., it will sometimes wake when opening a web page in Safari.

Hope you understand what I'm saying.

 

[martinvanderhof]

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I wish there was a solution, or at least a way of troubleshooting the issue. Bugga me.

 

[kaaskop]

its Spotlight

go to System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy and add your disk to the exceptions list. it stops OSX (Spotlight) kicking off the disk ..... at least it did for me.