Why do firewire drives have to spin up?

[thestaton]

I think it's odd that when I do some things like surf to a website, open the finder, choose to listen to a song my firewire drives have to spin up and I have to sit through the spinning beach ball while they do.

Is there a reason for this? Is there anyway I can make it stop doing this so I can be more productive?

Thanks.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

If you are using any files on the external drive, it will have to spin up... if you don't need it, disconnect it.

 

[synth3tik]

NAND drive.

 

[vansouza]

System Prefs Energy Saver

I think it's odd that when I do some things like surf to a website, open the finder, choose to listen to a song my firewire drives have to spin up and I have to sit through the spinning beach ball while they do.

Is there a reason for this? Is there anyway I can make it stop doing this so I can be more productive?

Thanks.

There you will find a little box to check or un-check: Put the hard disks to sleep when possible. I uncheck mine so the drives rarely go to sleep... that spinning up could be because the drives are napping... and need to wake up... I guess firewire allows for better control of external drives.

Good luck...

 

[Matek]

Yup, drives simply spin down after a certain period of inactivity. I have a WD MyBook Premium that does that and although it's annoying WD says we can't do anything about it. It's a built-in feature.

 

[iBunny]

Yup, drives simply spin down after a certain period of inactivity. I have a WD MyBook Premium that does that and although it's annoying WD says we can't do anything about it. It's a built-in feature.

Yeah, Mine does this too and its horrible. I get a loud clicking noise and can feel my desk move. I guess its really not that loud, but its deffinatly noticable. I Just am in the habbit of unplugging it now when I dont need to use it.

 

[wiz7dome]

I think the replies missed the point. I understand what the OP is saying. You're external FW drives will be sleeping fine, and all of a sudden you'll click a link, open an email, open a new window in Safari, etc, and then BOOM!! You get the spinning beach ball followed by several seconds of waiting for the drives to spin up.

This is also driving me crazy!! Its not using anything on or from those drives.

Its NOT a time machine issue (unless its a bug) as my TM isn't active.

Its NOT something that ever occurred in previous version of OS X (10.4) so any suggestion along the lines of "turn the drive off, disconnect it or unmount it" is IMO invalid as it doesn't address the issue.

This is the one thing that is driving me up a wall about Tiger.