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Optibay won't sleep

D

DaSal

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 19, 2008
333
296
The Netherlands
I installed the Optibay the other day and it seems like it won't sleep. I can have my computer on all day, and never used the Optibay drive, then when finally accessing it it didn't need to spin up - it was still on. This happens time and time again, it's always already spun up.

Furthermore, in the activity monitor I see that under disk activity it says the data read/sec is constantly around 18 mb per second. This is while I'm doing absolutely nothing. I only have Safari open right now, and have only this tab open. Is that normal? Should it be constantly reading?

Anybody know how I can fix this?

EDIT: I just ejected the optibay drive. I instantly heard it spin down, and now my data read/sec has dropped to 0 bytes. It seems like the MBP is constantly reading the optibay drive at full speed. Anybody know how I can fix this?

EDIT2: Ejecting it spins the optibay drive down, and stops disk activity. However, when my mac goes to sleep and wakes back up, the hard drive will start spinning again, regardless of being ejected. Re-mounting it and ejecting it again doesn't fix it, after sleeping and waking up again it'll stay spinning forever.

EDIT3: Could everyone please post if they have the spin down problem yes or no and which type of optibay they have, the official MCE one, or the cheaper Fenvi one. I was wondering if maybe it's somehow a problem with the cheaper fenvi one, which is the one I have
 
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Do any other Optibay users have this problem? Or if you have one and it functions properly, maybe you could post here too? And post specs and setup? Maybe I can somehow pinpoint what the problem might be.
 
It sounds like a similar problem stated in this guide http://uk.lifehacker.com/5541774/how-to-install-a-solid+state-drive-in-your-macbook

They mention this solution:


"It seems that connecting the SSD to the optical drive slot will give you problems waking from sleep, since the MacBook doesn't look to that SATA port for your main drive. I did not notice this before, as I don't sleep my computer. So, instead of installing your SSD in the Optibay, you'll want to disconnect your regular hard drive, install the SSD in that slot, and then install your old drive in the Optibay and continue as written."
 
Frankydan100 said:
It sounds like a similar problem stated in this guide http://uk.lifehacker.com/5541774/how-to-install-a-solid+state-drive-in-your-macbook

They mention this solution:


"It seems that connecting the SSD to the optical drive slot will give you problems waking from sleep, since the MacBook doesn't look to that SATA port for your main drive. I did not notice this before, as I don't sleep my computer. So, instead of installing your SSD in the Optibay, you'll want to disconnect your regular hard drive, install the SSD in that slot, and then install your old drive in the Optibay and continue as written."
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that the OP was talking about a HDD in the Optibay. Also, a SSD does not "spin up" so it would make more sense for the OP to be having trouble with a HDD.

DaSal said:
Do any other Optibay users have this problem? Or if you have one and it functions properly, maybe you could post here too? And post specs and setup? Maybe I can somehow pinpoint what the problem might be.
Click to expand...

I installed a Momentus XT in my optibay a few months back, and it has not spun down once that I know of if my MBP is awake. I have looked into solutions for this for some time and have found nothing as to why this happens. Unlike you though, my data read/sec is usually at zero, and it is still spinning all of the time. It would be nice to find a solution to this problem since it has cut my battery time down by 15%-25%.
 
I'm having the same issues with my setup, nearly switched back to stock today because of the problems.

It all makes sense, the question is if there will be any problems with installing an HDD in the Optibay. (Heat issues etc.) Does anyone have any experiences with this?

Thanks!
 
andogrando said:
I'm having the same issues with my setup, nearly switched back to stock today because of the problems.

It all makes sense, the question is if there will be any problems with installing an HDD in the Optibay. (Heat issues etc.) Does anyone have any experiences with this?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I haven't had any heating issues with my setup at all. The only thing is that the HDD never spins down regardless of whether or not it's in use which is kind of annoying honestly.
 
Could everyone please post if they have the spin down problem yes or no and which type of optibay they have, the official MCE one, or the cheaper Fenvi one. I was wondering if maybe it's somehow a problem with the cheaper fenvi one, which is the one I have

sab165 said:
I installed a Momentus XT in my optibay a few months back, and it has not spun down once that I know of if my MBP is awake. I have looked into solutions for this for some time and have found nothing as to why this happens. Unlike you though, my data read/sec is usually at zero, and it is still spinning all of the time. It would be nice to find a solution to this problem since it has cut my battery time down by 15%-25%.
Click to expand...

Odd. So I'm not the only person with this problem. Your battery life is quite good though, for me the optibay drive constantly spinning cuts down my battery life to only 3 hours, while doing NOTHING with the brightness at 50%. Obviously this is completely unacceptable. Sad thing is, since it's not a supported product, I can't do anything about it except for just remove it.

If I can't find a solution I'm really considdering just taking it out and saving my stuff on an external drive... I'd MUCH prefer having everything internal, but I'm not willing to sacrifice most of my battery life for it... let alone the fact that it makes the laptop noticeably louder and I can feel the HDD vibrate under my hand which is kind of annoying.


Frankydan100 said:
It sounds like a similar problem stated in this guide http://uk.lifehacker.com/5541774/how-to-install-a-solid+state-drive-in-your-macbook

They mention this solution:


"It seems that connecting the SSD to the optical drive slot will give you problems waking from sleep, since the MacBook doesn't look to that SATA port for your main drive. I did not notice this before, as I don't sleep my computer. So, instead of installing your SSD in the Optibay, you'll want to disconnect your regular hard drive, install the SSD in that slot, and then install your old drive in the Optibay and continue as written."
Click to expand...

I do have my SSD in the regular hard drive bay, and my old, stock HDD in the optibay.
 
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DaSal said:
Could everyone please post if they have the spin down problem yes or no and which type of optibay they have, the official MCE one, or the cheaper Fenvi one. I was wondering if maybe it's somehow a problem with the cheaper fenvi one, which is the one I have

Odd. So I'm not the only person with this problem. Your battery life is quite good though, for me the optibay drive constantly spinning cuts down my battery life to only 3 hours, while doing NOTHING with the brightness at 50%. Obviously this is completely unacceptable. Sad thing is, since it's not a supported product, I can't do anything about it except for just remove it.

If I can't find a solution I'm really considdering just taking it out and saving my stuff on an external drive... I'd MUCH prefer having everything internal, but I'm not willing to sacrifice most of my battery life for it... let alone the fact that it makes the laptop noticeably louder and I can feel the HDD vibrate under my hand which is kind of annoying.
Click to expand...

I have the OWC Data Doubler for reference.

3 hours battery life!? I can get about 5 hours out of mine at 50% brightness as long as I've got Parallels paused. If Parallels (Win 7) is running then I get about 3 hours. The battery loss for me isn't an issue though, because I never used the optical drive, and the SSD + HDD combo is super nice!

I will agree with you that it does make the computer loud with the drive always spinning, I have been debating for some time now on just going ahead and getting another 240GB SSD and dropping it in place of the Momentus just to run silently all of the time :D
 
sab165 said:
I have the OWC Data Doubler for reference.

3 hours battery life!? I can get about 5 hours out of mine at 50% brightness as long as I've got Parallels paused. If Parallels (Win 7) is running then I get about 3 hours. The battery loss for me isn't an issue though, because I never used the optical drive, and the SSD + HDD combo is super nice!

I will agree with you that it does make the computer loud with the drive always spinning, I have been debating for some time now on just going ahead and getting another 240GB SSD and dropping it in place of the Momentus just to run silently all of the time :D
Click to expand...

I think we may have faulty optibays. I can't find any specific details on the fenvi ones on their website, and I don't know about the OWC, but the MCE one is supposed to support sleeping/spinning down, it states so specifically on their website. Either our cheaper knock-offs are cheaper for a reason and don't support it, or perhaps we did something wrong or there's something wrong with the hardware in our optibays?
 
I'm not sure that I would call them faulty just yet. I've been doing some more searching via Google, and it seems that there are quite a few cases like this spread out over the past year that haven't gained much attention. I think that it is a software problem with the OS thinking that the superdrive is supposed to be located where we now have our 2nd disk drive (I think). It appears that some have gotten certain drives to spin down normally by just putting a cheap, 5400rpm drive in place of their fancier drive. Clearly this is all speculation as to what might be wrong, but it would be nice for this issue to gain some attention so a more tech savvy person could shed some light as to what the problem might be :confused:
 
Possible fix!?

HaHa!! I may have found a solution to our problem. First, a bit of logic to back up why I think this works. I believe that Spotlight may be indexing/searching the drive every 5-10 minutes causing the drive to stay continuously spinning based on the fact that the default spin down time is 10 minutes. So if every 8 minutes Spotlight looks at the optibay drive then it would seem like the drive is always reading/writing data. Again, this is pure speculation, and I do not claim to know for sure what the cause of the problem is.

The first step I took was to disable Spotlight from indexing and searching the optibay drive. I then applied a Terminal command:
sudo -a disksleep VALUE - where "VALUE" is the time in minutes that you want the disk to spin down.
Input your password and the Terminal command will take effect.

I set my value to 3, and after 3 minutes the drive spun down just like it normally should. I am now in the process of determining which item actually solved the problem, Spotlight or Terminal Command. Please check this out on your end to confirm if this solution works.

Update: I can confirm on my end that the Terminal command alone will allow the optibay drive to spin down at a value of 3.
 
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My HDD doesn't like to sleep. I have my SSD in a Maxupgrades optibay (I believe it is the exact same product as the OWC data doubler) and my stock hard drive remains in the stock location. The HDD in my system doesn't spin down either.... So maybe it's more about the fact of having two drives in the system rather than the optibay itself. Makes me think it's OS related.

I hardly ever use spotlight. I could live without it. Can I turn it off completely?
 
bozz2006 said:
My HDD doesn't like to sleep. I have my SSD in a Maxupgrades optibay (I believe it is the exact same product as the OWC data doubler) and my stock hard drive remains in the stock location. The HDD in my system doesn't spin down either.... So maybe it's more about the fact of having two drives in the system rather than the optibay itself. Makes me think it's OS related.

I hardly ever use spotlight. I could live without it. Can I turn it off completely?
Click to expand...

Do you have the OS and your apps on the SSD in your optibay?

I would have agreed this morning that it is OS related, but I've been toying with mine all day now, and the steps I mentioned in my previous post have fixed my no sleeping issue for my HDD in the optibay. Also, it wouldn't make sense for the OS to be the culprit because the people with Mac Pros should have the same trouble when they have 2+ drives in the tower.

Either way, I'm just happy that mine has started spinning down like it should when not in use.

Oh and I would assume that if you add both of your drives under the privacy setting that spotlight would not be able to index/read from those drives thus essentially turning it off. I'm sure there is a Terminal command to disable it, but I do not know it.
 
Yep, I've got the SSD located in the optical bay with everything except my home folder, which is on the HDD in the HDD bay.
 
fehhkk said:
I don't understand why people put the main drive where the optical drive is.
Click to expand...

For an SSD, it's because of this:

Frankydan100 said:
"It seems that connecting the SSD to the optical drive slot will give you problems waking from sleep, since the MacBook doesn't look to that SATA port for your main drive. I did not notice this before, as I don't sleep my computer. So, instead of installing your SSD in the Optibay, you'll want to disconnect your regular hard drive, install the SSD in that slot, and then install your old drive in the Optibay and continue as written."
Click to expand...
 
I've had my HDD in my Optibay and my SSD is on the main SATA port since day one, never had any issues with sleep or beachballs.
 
How can I tell if it's spinning? I have an SSD in the main (due to it being a vertex 3 and I need to take advantage of the 6GBps not available in the optibay slot.) and the OEM 5400 320GB HDD in the optibay slot.

I check disk activity under activity monitor and it says: 0 bytes/0 bytes currently.

I try to put my ear up to it but it just sounds like the fan. If there is a way I can improve my battery life - I'd love to. I just keep all my media files and music on my HDD.
 
Put it to sleep, wait thirty seconds, then put your ear to it. If you can hear something that sounds like a fan, that would be your hard disk that hasn't properly spun down.
 
sab165 said:
HaHa!! I may have found a solution to our problem. First, a bit of logic to back up why I think this works. I believe that Spotlight may be indexing/searching the drive every 5-10 minutes causing the drive to stay continuously spinning based on the fact that the default spin down time is 10 minutes. So if every 8 minutes Spotlight looks at the optibay drive then it would seem like the drive is always reading/writing data. Again, this is pure speculation, and I do not claim to know for sure what the cause of the problem is.

The first step I took was to disable Spotlight from indexing and searching the optibay drive. I then applied a Terminal command:
sudo -a disksleep VALUE - where "VALUE" is the time in minutes that you want the disk to spin down.
Input your password and the Terminal command will take effect.

I set my value to 3, and after 3 minutes the drive spun down just like it normally should. I am now in the process of determining which item actually solved the problem, Spotlight or Terminal Command. Please check this out on your end to confirm if this solution works.

Update: I can confirm on my end that the Terminal command alone will allow the optibay drive to spin down at a value of 3.
Click to expand...

Changing the disk sleep time changes nothing for me. I tried 3 minutes, I tried 1 minute. It just won't sleep.

However, the spotlight index thing did seem to work for me. So far anyway, it seems to spin down after 3 minutes when I have spotlight indexing for the drive turned off. Thank GOD! :D I just hope it's not a fluke and it stays working :)
 
I spoke too soon. After sleeping my Macbook and letting it wake again, it refuses to sleep the hard drive again. It seems it only works straight from fresh boot, and it stops working after sleeping/waking the Macbook.

sab165 could you try this and see if it works for you or if sleeping the Macbook breaks it for you too?
 
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