Optibay HDD spinning up and down

[gr4z]

Hi
I recently upgraded my stock HDD to a SSD and moved the HDD into the optibay. I was hoping that using the command pmset -a disksleep 1 would mean the 5400rpm drive would go to sleep after 1 minute of inactivity and I would get nice SSD silence It usually does but something is making it spin up again all the time. I am hardly running anything on my MBP.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[millerb7]

Hi
I recently upgraded my stock HDD to a SSD and moved the HDD into the optibay. I was hoping that using the command pmset -a disksleep 1 would mean the 5400rpm drive would go to sleep after 1 minute of inactivity and I would get nice SSD silence It usually does but something is making it spin up again all the time. I am hardly running anything on my MBP.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

Anything plugged into USB? USB stuff or when you go to save anything at all seems to spin up the HDDs.

My externals anyways.


If you come up with a good solution, PLEASE let me know. I'm about to optibay and I AM OBSESSED with how cool/silent my machine is right now with the SSD. It's amazing, I can't get the fans to kick on haha.

If I put a HDD in it, I want it off most the time unless I'm accessing it.

Let me know if you find out how

 

[gr4z]

Well after a few reboots it seems to have sorted itself out. The HDD only spins up when needed. It might of been because some files were on HDD that were being uploaded to Dropbox so it was constantly accessing it finished now so all nice and silent.

 

[millerb7]

Well after a few reboots it seems to have sorted itself out. The HDD only spins up when needed. It might of been because some files were on HDD that were being uploaded to Dropbox so it was constantly accessing it finished now so all nice and silent.

So pmset seems to be working fine for you?

 

[deeddawg]

Random thought and I likely am showing my ignorance, but could that also have been caused by Spotlight Search indexing the drive contents when it thinks the system is idle? And if its finished building its index it's now quit doing so?

 

[millerb7]

Random thought and I likely am showing my ignorance, but could that also have been caused by Spotlight Search indexing the drive contents when it thinks the system is idle? And if its finished building its index it's now quit doing so?

Does spotlight index the non-OS hard drives?

if so, then probably could have been.

 

[derlockere]

I have to digg out this thread again.

Reason: My HDD in Optibay spins up (roughly every 5 minutes) frequently although I do not access the HDD at all. This happens even when I eject the drive in Finder (and it show unmounted in Diskutility)

Any suggestions? I tried Filemon, but there are lots of events and I do not know how to filter for file operations only taking place on the optibay HDD and not on the System SSD!?

HDD in optibay is a Hitachi HTS725050A9A362

The drive is disabled in the Spotlight / Privacy Settings. (Anyway, when it's ejected it doesn't even show up there)

Any help in diagnostics or problem solving is highly welcomed!

Cheers, S.

 

[riptideMBP]

Random thought and I likely am showing my ignorance, but could that also have been caused by Spotlight Search indexing the drive contents when it thinks the system is idle? And if its finished building its index it's now quit doing so?

yes, spotlight will spin up non system drives, so you need to disable indexing of them in system preferences --> spotlight --> privacy. also there's a pretty cool utility called fseventer that will help you diagnose issues.

 

[derlockere]

yes, spotlight will spin up non system drives, so you need to disable indexing of them in system preferences --> spotlight --> privacy. also there's a pretty cool utility called fseventer that will help you diagnose issues.

Thanks for bringing that up!

Spotlight is disabled for the drive of course!
I will try fs_eventer although Filemon does the same I guess.

Cheers, S.

 

[derlockere]

Hi Folks!

I tried with fs_eventer and (as expected) there is no process trying to access the HDD.

What i found on some Linux forums is, that there might be a process calling the SMART status of the drive, which spins up the drive. Unde rLinux there is a solution via hdparm which allows you to prevent the HDD from spinning up.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/25543/unmounted-disk-still-spins-up-regularly

Does anybody know how to adjust the sleep / standby status of the drive (under Linux the solution is to set the drive to standby instead of sleep, as it reacts on the SMART status request without spinning up when in standby.)

I read the diskutil manpage and there is no such option available there.

Cheers, S.

 

[bperrella]

My Optibay would spin up all the time even when my MacBook was sleeping and then turn off without spinning down (made nasty clicking sound like when you held the power button until the macbook shuts off). I eventually gave up and bought a bigger SSD and removed the optibay.

 

[riptideMBP]

Hi Folks!

I tried with fs_eventer and (as expected) there is no process trying to access the HDD.

What i found on some Linux forums is, that there might be a process calling the SMART status of the drive, which spins up the drive. Unde rLinux there is a solution via hdparm which allows you to prevent the HDD from spinning up.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/25543/unmounted-disk-still-spins-up-regularly

Does anybody know how to adjust the sleep / standby status of the drive (under Linux the solution is to set the drive to standby instead of sleep, as it reacts on the SMART status request without spinning up when in standby.)

I read the diskutil manpage and there is no such option available there.

Cheers, S.

do you have istat installed, because most of my issues stopped when i disabled its hard drive functions... alternatively you could use an unmounting script everytime you heard the HDD running (even if the disk was unmounted), but that would be annoying to do

 

[derlockere]

do you have istat installed, because most of my issues stopped when i disabled its hard drive functions... alternatively you could use an unmounting script everytime you heard the HDD running (even if the disk was unmounted), but that would be annoying to do

In fact, uninstalling istat has solved the issue so far.
I was keen and installed it once again and disabled all HDD related sensors etc. and as far as I can say the problem is gone.
I have to further track the issue!

In case anything comes back again I will keep it posted here!

Thx for your hint!
Cheers, S.

 

[happle]

bump - does anyone have any further information on this? I'm having the same problem.