hard drive polling seemingly solved

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Level 3

586 points

hard drive polling seemingly solved

A while back I asked for advice about what might be causing intermittent HD access. For quite a while I have had one of my external drives make a sound roughly every 6 seconds as if a small bit of data were being written. Recently I did a backup to that HD, not unlike what I have done in the past, using Superduper. It has only been an hour or to but I note that I am not hearing the same, regular HD polling. Quite the interesting puzzle, and a much better one that constant crashes or my screen regularly going black. 🙂

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10), MP w/ 8gig ram and 3TB storage ftw

Posted on Oct 15, 2007 10:00 PM

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Answer 1

Bud Kuenzli Author

Level 3

586 points

Oct 18, 2007 12:36 PM in response to Bud Kuenzli

FWIW, the hard drive accessing came back and continued so I got serious about it and spent quite a while tracking it down. Turns out it is SMCfancontrol tht is at the root of the problem. It may be some interaction with it and another program but the bottom line is when I turn it off I'm OK...with it on I get a HD access sound every 6 sec or so. I sent an email to the developer to ask about it. For now, I can have quiet or cool....but I would prefer to have cool quiet...

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Oct 18, 2007 2:06 PM in response to Bud Kuenzli

Hardware Monitor can cause excess drive polling, only the software warns you when going through the setup and preferences.

sometimes less is more, more stable, runs faster, fewer problems or side effects.

I never let hard drives spin down, otherwise maybe I would notice some effect. Even Disk Warrior I don't let it check drive status or "health" (SMART generally isn't that "smart" or useful.

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Answer 3

Bud Kuenzli Author

Level 3

586 points

Oct 18, 2007 5:34 PM in response to The hatter

I open Hardware Monitor occasionally but that has not been open recently. It appears the culprit was SMCfancontrol. Like many others, I have my Energy Saver option unchecked for Allow Hard Drives to Sleep (whatever the exact wording is) but it doesn't stop my drives from spinning down after some period. That also was entirely unrelated to this issue, which was an audible polling, if that's the right term, of the hard drives nearly every 6-8 seconds. At times it would stop, so even now I'm not 100% sure it's solved, but since turning of SMCfancontrol and restarting without it loading, all has been quiet. I think there is another similar program that I'll have to check for if the machine here continues to run without that audible thunk.

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