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time machine & hard drive

N

niemo810

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 26, 2007
81
0
Hi, I recently upgraded to Leopard, and I love time machine, but there is one quirk that I want to get ironed out.

After a backup, my external hard drive shuts down after about 10 minutes of inactivity. When it's time for a backup again, my drive has to spin back up. I hate to have it go through so many cycles, because a) it's bad for the drive and b) the sound is annoying when I'm trying to sleep.

Is there a way to keep the drive running 24/7?

I'm not sure if this is controlled by OSX or by the hard drive enclosure. Any help is appreciated.

-Rob
 
What's the hard drive?

There is a bit in energy saver (under main preferences) which says something like 'Put hard disks to sleep when possible'. Is that ticked?

Perhaps it applies to external drives also.
 
System Preferences > Energy Saver, Check box at the bottom.

Not sure if it applies to external drives though.
 
yeah, I tried un-ticking that box, but it only applies to the internal hard disk(s). Looks like I might just have to live with it... Ugh.

If it helps, it's a generic USB to SATA enclosure.
 
you want it to spin down

If your hard drive didn't spin down, it would wear out very quickly. Also, do not check the don't put hard disks to sleep thing, as this will wear out your internal hard drive as well... there really isn't much to be done except maybe moving the hard disk to another room and getting an extra long usb cable?
 
Hard drives spinning on/off is one of the worst things for a hard drive. This was one of the downfalls of the hybrid hard drives Samsung released. While they save a lot of battery life and access times are quick since you're reading mostly from flash memory, the disks would turn off and only spin up about once every hour which, like I mentioned, does not help with the longevity of the hard drive.
 
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