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blackbird21
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Q: hard drive doesn't spin down

I recently upgraded my Powerbook G3 Lombard (333 mhz / 320 mb) from OS 9.1 to OS 10.3.9. In the "energy saver" preference window I have selected "put hard disk to sleep when possible," and yet I notice that the hard disk never spins down. To see longer battery life I would like to have the hard drive spin down when I am doing word processing on Apple Works. In OS 9 I could make the hard disk spin down by simply selecting that command in the energy saver control panel; Is there something I can do that will make or help the hard drive to spin down in OS 10.3.9? Would bringing the RAM up to 512 mb (if I could figure it out) make a difference on this issue?

Powerbook G3 Lombard (333 mhz), Mac OS X (10.3.9), 320 mb

Posted on Sep 27, 2007 8:21 PM

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blackbird21

Q: hard drive doesn't spin down

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  • by Appaloosa mac man,

    Appaloosa mac man Appaloosa mac man Sep 27, 2007 9:34 PM in response to blackbird21
    Level 5 (4,330 points)
    Sep 27, 2007 9:34 PM in response to blackbird21
    blackbird21,

    Welcome to the discussions. Give yourself a broader audience by also posting here:

    http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=161

    Did you eliminate OS 9? I assume so if you only have a 320 mb hard drive. More RAM will always help but a bigger hard drive at the same time would give OS X room to work.

    Jim

  • by blackbird21,

    blackbird21 blackbird21 Sep 28, 2007 5:40 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 28, 2007 5:40 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man
    Thanks for the lead on a larger posting category.

    Just to clarify, my Powerbook Lombard has a 4 gig hard drive (2 gig are available / unused) and 320 mb RAM.

    No, I have not eliminated OS9 yet.

  • by Appaloosa mac man,

    Appaloosa mac man Appaloosa mac man Sep 28, 2007 9:31 AM in response to blackbird21
    Level 5 (4,330 points)
    Sep 28, 2007 9:31 AM in response to blackbird21
    Did you partition your drive? Put OS X on the first partition and then let 9 be a backup.

    If you have an external SCSI hard drive, you will have a much easier time backing up and reconfiguring your PB internal hard drive.

    How much do you plan to use this computer? Is this an educational experiment or will you want regular backups? Are you willing to spend $50 on various resources to simplify having OS X on that computer? OS X is not user friendly when it comes to installation and configuration when compared with 9 and earlier. What are your goals for use of the computer?

    Ji˜m

  • by blackbird21,

    blackbird21 blackbird21 Sep 28, 2007 10:21 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 28, 2007 10:21 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man
    I want to use my Powerbook for surfing the internet. OS 9 doesn't give me good browser options anymore. OS 10.3.9 works smooth and fine on my old Powerbook, except for the hard drive not spinning down for energy saving purposes. That's the only fix I'm looking for.

    Thanks.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Sep 29, 2007 5:11 PM in response to blackbird21
    Level 9 (61,292 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 29, 2007 5:11 PM in response to blackbird21
    You could try running Activity Monitor > (System Memory pane) and see if you still have free memory (green in the pie chart) available. It needs to be more than just a sliver, and you should also have a substantial amount of inactive memory (blue).

    You can click on the column heading for Real Memory and it will sort by memory-hog order to see where it is going.

    I am working from my memory here, but I think you should have two sets of Energy Saver settings available -- one for Battery-only and one for Power Adapter. Is that right? Are both set to spin down the Hard Drive?

  • by blackbird21,

    blackbird21 blackbird21 Oct 4, 2007 7:21 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 4, 2007 7:21 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Thanks for the good input and advice. Here's what I've found (in case anyone else has the same question). There is a shareware utility called Xupport that allows me to have a little control over the hard drive spinning down. I can now set the hard drive to spin down after a minute of inactivity, where Apple's default is ten minutes. It seems the real solution, however, will be to get a newer, whisper quiet (more power effecient) hard drive. The reality is that Apple designed OSX to make greater use of virtual memory and so the system is accessing the hard drive a lot more often than in OS9. This is probably why Apple dropped the hard drive spin down option.