Nicholas-c Veteran Posted November 9, 2009 Veteran Share Posted November 9, 2009 Hey guys, Finally got around to installing OSx 10.6 Snow leopard, clean install. (2008 Intel mac) It runs nice and smooth, However i am experiencing 1 issue with my external hdd (usb), every now and then the HDD will spin down to save power, However it spins up again, takes about 5 seconds from idle to a "read state". In this 5 second period osx freezes up completely. This wouldn't be an issue if the hard drive was quiet, that way i could have it so it doesn't sleep. However thats not the case and its loud :p Help? Thanks Nicholas-c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madoshi Posted November 9, 2009 Share Posted November 9, 2009 does it just lock up until the hard drive is spun up, or do you have to reset? if its just freezing during those 5 seconds, it is probably the Finder's fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicholas-c Veteran Posted November 9, 2009 Author Veteran Share Posted November 9, 2009 Yeah, Once the HDD is spun up and ready to go everything is usable again (firefox etc even freezes) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giga Veteran Posted November 9, 2009 Veteran Share Posted November 9, 2009 Some externals do this because they seem to ignore the operating system's own power management. My internal doesn't experience the same issue, probably since it doesn't have its own power management unit. Anyhow, you could keep the drive from sleeping if the setting in Energy Saver isn't working for you: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/syst...vespinning.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madoshi Posted November 9, 2009 Share Posted November 9, 2009 you have it sleeping on purpose due to the drive being noisy right? sounds obvious, but have you considered just unplugging the drive when you aren't using it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliott Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 Unfortunately, without keeping the drive spinning with a utility like giga suggested, you can't fix the behavior. I have a WD MyBook that does the same thing when I try and use save/open dialogs and the likes. Just using Finder doesn't cause it to need to spin up, but any time a save/open dialog comes up, it takes about 4 or 5 seconds for that app to become responsive while the disk spins up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicholas-c Veteran Posted November 10, 2009 Author Veteran Share Posted November 10, 2009 Unfortunately, without keeping the drive spinning with a utility like giga suggested, you can't fix the behavior. I have a WD MyBook that does the same thing when I try and use save/open dialogs and the likes. Just using Finder doesn't cause it to need to spin up, but any time a save/open dialog comes up, it takes about 4 or 5 seconds for that app to become responsive while the disk spins up. With 10.5 it used to spin down until i navigated to the drive in finder, so it only spun up during use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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