Time Machine Disk spinning all the time?

Well, believe it or not disks exhibit less wear when they're spinning as opposed to when they are constantly put to sleep and woken up.. Kind of like a light bulb, which will more likely burn out by being turned on and off all the time, rather than staying constantly lit. Simple physics.

Since the time capsule is technically a server, even claiming to use "server grade hard drives," Apple is probably just abiding by this principle and keeping the drive always spinning.

I agree with Daniel - however, mine does stop.

Mine (TC 1TB) is spinning continuously. It's too noisy, isn't there a way to make it stop?

Thanks for help!

Hi guys. Not for me.
I was very surprised but, just now, my Time Capsule was not making any noise nor vibration, and yes, the disk was in stand-by. I just check, last backup on my mini was 20 minutes before. I just activated a "backup now" and the disk started to spin directly. !
So yes, the disk fall asleep but I don't know how and when, but I'm very glad it is.

Why it would be a server always spinning drive ? I sleep and my computers too, so I would just be unhappy with a drive always spinning !

Mine is spinning and getting very hot all the time. I'll send it back to Apple (?).

Maybe you have to give it some times ? Or we can see a future update. I mean, if mine was sleeping, it means something is done for that, but for now we don't know how, and can't change the settings. But probably soon.

And in my case, it's so cold here, I'm glad it's a bit hot 🙂 and it's not so hot, and it's really not noisy, I'm really more happy with it than with any other external hard disk I have!

*UPDATE : 15 minutes after I asked a "backup now", it's again in sleep mode... :)*

Message was edited by: Sebastien S.

Mine is warm-hot to the touch. I can leave my hand on it without discomfort. A RadioShack IR thermometer measures the warmest point on the top at 120 degrees. There is a fan inside which is on at all times. The fan is fairly quiet. I can only hear it when my Mac is shut down. (A dual G5 is CLEARLY louder than the Time Capsule...) The hard drive goes to sleep quickly. If I try to access the hard drive, I can barely hear it spinning up to speed. There's about a 5-10 second delay before the finder window opens. I assume this is how it is supposed to be? Does anyone know how the Time Capsule is supposed to behave? There aren't really any references yet... The genius at my local Apple store just started using one and doesn't yet have an understanding of its normal behavior.

yeah you are right, that's not documented anywhere, and that's missing !

I can say even, the mini, when used, is louder.

Sometimes the HD goes to sleep when idle for 2 minutes. Then it begin to spin and doesn't stop, for hours. Really noisy. No way, I have to unplug it. And the game begins again...

Same here. After a lot of trying I believe the problem is how you connect to TC. If using it for Time Machine only the disk spins down after 2 minutes. Using it as a NAS (copying files to/from it etc) it sometimes spins down sometimes it doesnt. I also found out, that if you eject/disconnect TC before shutting down it helps. Otherwise TC will spin up during shut down (not sleep!) and wont stop.
After restarting TC it will spin down again. Very annoying to have to reboot TC if I want to sleep quietly 😉

I hope this will be fixed in a firmware update.

yes ... 7.3.1 fixed it!

mine always goes to sleep when not in use for a few minutes. It only spins up when Time Machine is preparing backup.
very quiet and it is warm, not hot

teorema67 wrote:
Mine (TC 1TB) is spinning continuously. It's too noisy, isn't there a way to make it stop?

Thanks for help!

Too noisy? You must have super hero hearing.
I love running downstairs when my backup starts to see the activity of the drive when it starts. I hear the disc START spinning when job starts (1 TB.)

I've been using Time Machine for a week and it worked fine the first few days, now whenever it starts backing up, it never stops. The disk keeps spinning. And when clicking on the Time Machine menu bar icon, it always says "preparing to back up." Also when i click on my external hard drive it shows some days bcked up but the one from the day before is still in progess and doesn't have backups for the days since.

Be sure to restart your computer, then give it time to proceed.
If something went wrong it may have to check integrity of the files and this could take a lot of time.

Be sure Ethernet is upper than Airport in your network preferences, try to shutdown, connect to TC via Ethernet, then reboot your mac, and see what happend. If the TC make some disk noise it's not a bad point.