Hard Drive Goes To Sleep - Always

If you type…

pmset -g

… into Terminal what do you get returned?

I have this issue too. I own two identical MacPro units running 10.4.10. They are set for the CPU to sleep after 1 hr, display after 15 mins. The "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option in Energy Saver is OFF.

Despite the latter, after a certain length of time (not much more than 15mins), at least one hard drive(s) spin down (one machine has 3 drives, the other 2), stopping with a click (presumably head-locking). A few minutes later they do it again, adn so on indefinitely.

I am not disturbed by this so much as worrying that the drive(s) will suffer more wear by being spun up and down every few minutes than if they stayed either on or off. I would therefore like them to stay in one state or the other, and I feel that this should be determined by the Energy Saver setting of "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible", which is currently apparently IGNORED. ie this appears to be a bug.

The response I get on one machine to the instruction "pmset -g" is :

Active Profiles:
AC Power -1*
Currently in use:
disksleep 180
hibernatemode 0
displaysleep 15
powerbutton 1
womp 1
sleep 60
autorestart 0
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

Hope this helps.

Has this been reported as a bug?

Drive in Bay 1 is the original WD2500JS (Macintosh HD)
Drive in Bay 2 is a third-party ST3500641AS

I can't tell you which one(s) I hear spinning down. It is rather hard to tell.

Thanks,
--Richard E

I have the same thing happening. I'd also guess it's around 15 min but that could be way off; I've never timed it. My response to pmset -g is very similar to Richard's

Active Profiles:
AC Power -1*
Currently in use:
disksleep 180
hibernatemode 0
displaysleep 56
powerbutton 1
womp 1
sleep 57
autorestart 0
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

Anyone have any news on this issue?
Thanks!
--R

If the drives are set to not sleep, then it should be
disksleep 0

Try deleting "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist" then redo the settings in "Energy Saver" system preference.

This might do as a workaround (I am waiting to see the results as I write this) but that's all it is.

If the disks are set to sleep after a certain time, they should sleep. If they are set to stay on, they should stay on. They should not spin down.... and spin down.... and spin down.....

--Richard E

disksleep 180

means the drives were set to sleep after 3 minutes. You could look at the file with TextEdit and see what the setting is in the file. The system should be using the file to get its setting.

Here's the results of a little experimentation with this setting file.

Deleting the preferences file results in a new one being created when the Energy Saver pref pane is opened. On opening the pref pane, I note that the "Put disks to sleep whenever possible" box is checked. Unchecking it results in the file getting the value: <key>Disk Sleep Timer</key><integer>180</integer>. We have already exstablished that with this value the disks spin down after a few minutes.

If you manually set this to 0 the disks still spin down after a few minutes idle. CHECKING the box sets this value to 10. In this case the disks also spin down after a few minutes idle. In fact one might even suggest that the Disk Sleep Timer value has no impact on disk behaviour at all.

I cannot currently identify which drive(s) is/are spinning down. I am currently on the machine that has two drives. One is the original drive, the WD model; the other is a third party drive, a Seagate. Is it possible that the Seagate has its own idle spin-down capability and that when this kicks in, the system wakes it up again?

If not, then this would appear to be a bug.

I had the same problem of hard drives spinning down even though the checkbox in energy saver to put hard drives to sleep when possible was unchecked. Apple support suggested I reinstall osx which i was reluctant to do. I am now using Cocktail app which allows users to set the amount of time before hard drives sleep. When set to never "disksleep 0" is set.
When energy savers disk sleep is set to never (box unchecked) "disksleep 180" is set.
"disksleep 0" seems to have solved the problem. However i wouldn't mind having the option of forcing certain unused drives to sleep or switch off as sometimes I will not use a drive for weeks.
Hope this helps.

Well, all I can say is that when Cocktail is set to let my disks sleep after 1 hour, they still spin down after about 15mins and repeatedly thereafter as described above. I have now set it to "Never" and will report later on any impact, but I am more than sceptical.

Yes individual drive settings would be good, might put that in on a feedback form,

FWIW, I'm having the same problem now with my external FW drives, and it may well have shown up when I installed 10.4.10. The drives spin down ALL the time, and I have to wait for them to spin up again (and worry about the wear and tear of all this up and down business).

I have 2 external firewire drives and these sleep on there own, as i believe this is loaded into the units firmware (WD My Book Pro's)

Same here. Brand new machine and all drives, internal and external, are spinning down within five minutes regardless of settings or changing the plist entry. These drives worked fine in my G5 on 10.4.10. I'm pretty screwed since I work with audio and this destroys any viable workflow.

Installed OS on drive in bay 3 - same result. Called Apple: "Thank you for calling Apple, we are currently closed.....brrrrrrrrrrr."

Out to lunch more like.