OSX unnecessarily wakes external drive - can this be changed?

Question

Level 2

246 points

OSX unnecessarily wakes external drive - can this be changed?

I have a Seagate FreeAgentPro (FW4 Media) connected for Time Machine and extra storage purposes which is often asleep. Every time I save anything within any app OSX seeks to check the external drive – causing a spinning beachball delay until the drive is up and running – even if, as is usually the case, I intend to save to the internal disc. It's very annoying. (Why can't they make it so that if you choose the external disc as a destination, only then do you have to wait for it to be wakened?)

Now with Snow Leopard every time I choose Look Up In Dictionary from within Safari, Pages, and some other apps (not Text Edit) it does the same thing and waits until the external drive is up and awake again before it opens the Dictionary. Grrr.

I'm wondering if OSX's behaviour can be changed so that it no longer needs to wake up my external drive when I hit Save, or Look Up In Dictionary. Or is this something to do with the drive, and other people don't experience this behaviour?

MacBook (white) 2.16Ghz, 3Gb RAM, 500Gb HD, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jan 26, 2010 1:37 PM

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Answer 1

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Jan 26, 2010 2:34 PM in response to CRhysB

If an acceptable solution to you is having the drive not spin down in the first place, you can set than in System Preferences -> Energy Saver. Then you won't have to worry about it spinning up and halting the system.

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Answer 2

CRhysB Author

Level 2

246 points

Jan 26, 2010 4:10 PM in response to Király

Hi, thanks for your suggestion.

Yes, I realize that may be an option (I'm not sure the energy saving sleep routine isn't a function of the FreeAgent drive firmware, which may or may not be easily adjusted). But I do like the quiet environment it allows when asleep. Thus my wish to discover if this is necessary, universal behaviour of the OS.

I'm really wondering if it's necessary for the OS to require anything of mounted drives before opening the Save dialogue or, now with Snow Leopard, the Dictionary for heavens' sake. Whether it's just me who has this behaviour with OSX (or just me who finds it irritating 🙂 ) and if something can be adjusted so the OS doesn't seek to wake the drive.

If not, then I guess my three options are 1. Live with it; 2. Keep the drive running; and 3. Eject the drive (not good for Time Machine).

Do most people have their TM drives running without pause? If not, is this delay when saving not particularly bothersome?

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Answer 3

CRhysB Author

Level 2

246 points

Jan 27, 2010 6:05 AM in response to CRhysB

I'm wondering if OSX's behaviour can be changed so that it no longer needs to wake up my external drive when I hit Save, or Look Up In Dictionary.

Anyone know?

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Answer 4

CRhysB Author

Level 2

246 points

Jan 28, 2010 1:00 PM in response to CRhysB

?

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Answer 5

apikoros

Level 1

14 points

Jan 28, 2010 1:05 PM in response to CRhysB

For what it's worth, I'll add my ? to yours. I have the same question, prompted by the same experience.

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Answer 6

jskains

Level 1

0 points

Feb 20, 2010 5:23 PM in response to apikoros

I was about to post the same question, but mine does further. Anytime I do ANYTHING on the computer, it wakes the stupid drive back up 😟

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Answer 7

Mar 15, 2010 12:07 AM in response to CRhysB

Has anyone had any luck with this? I have 2 external drives that are connected, I hate the lag that is created when 99.9% of the time I don't save it to a mounted external drive. It seems like an awful waste of time.

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Answer 8

Mar 15, 2010 3:44 AM in response to CRhysB

Yep, I have this too. I have a Western Digital 500GB USB drive that I use to store occasional movies and for Time Machine. It goes to sleep on its own (not due to the system telling it to go to sleep, it's a built-in feature) after like 15 minutes. So yeah, even when I want to click the Google search box in Safari, I have to wait 5 seconds before the cursor starts blinking as I hear the drive spin up. There is NOTHING on that drive that the OS could possibly want, especially when it isn't time to back up for Time Machine (that should only happen once an hour, not 4 times an hour). I really hope one day they'll implement a feature into OS X that only attempts to access drives when they are required to be accessed.

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Answer 9

direwolf8

Level 4

1,286 points

Mar 15, 2010 10:35 AM in response to CRhysB

I don't think you can change the behavior because it's not feasible for the system to guess when you'll need the drive available and when you won't. There might be SOME circumstances when you can be sure, but not in every case. For example: A dialog box comes up asking me where I want to store something. The system has no way to know that you'll NEVER want to store it on the sleeping disk, so it has to make the resource available (and refresh the system cache). Anytime the system needs to know what resources are available, it has to wake up sleeping devices. The solution is to not let your peripherals sleep when the computer is in use. Or else get used to waiting for them to wake up. You're probably not saving much power. Wear and tear is greater on disk drives that spin up and down than those that stay spinning. The system can't read your mind and anticipate exactly when it will need to wake something up.

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Answer 10

kg1794

Level 1

0 points

Mar 17, 2010 1:30 AM in response to direwolf8

I have the same problem with a Seagate FreeAgent 1TB, it's infuriating. Whilst direwolf8 says it's not feasible for the system to guess when I'll need the drive, why can't it be set so that it assumes I don't want the drive unless I click on it's icon from within Finder? To access it when I load dictionary is, however, really puzzling - what could it possibly want from the external drive when using that application?

To be honest I've had nothing but problems with regards to this particular external HDD and Mac OS X, does anyone have a particular make of external drives where this spin-up causing Mac OS X to slow down doesn't happen?

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Answer 11

May 24, 2010 7:36 AM in response to kg1794

I found this thread after my most recent semi-regular search for a solution to this problem — I have two infrequently external drives (both Seagate — one used for Time Machine) and the spin-up delay that precedes everything from launching Dictionary to saving a document is a pain in the arse.

I'd much rather Open/Save dialog boxes wake the drives when they're accessed in the dialog (they never are) and I cannot begin to fathom why Dictionary needs to wake them. I suspect this is a core part of the way Mac OS X works and so isn't easily fixed — I certainly have no solution.

Still, bump, I guess...

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Answer 12

John Potts

Level 4

3,118 points

May 24, 2010 7:55 AM in response to CRhysB

I have the same experience with an external LaCie drive, which is not used for Time Machine (I have a Time Capsule for that purpose).

This behaviour also occurred in OSX 10.5 - I had been hoping it would go away in 10.6!

In a sense, I'm relieved to know that other users using different makes of external drive also have the same issue - at least I know that it's nothing personal!

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Answer 13

felibb

Level 1

5 points

May 24, 2010 9:27 AM in response to CRhysB

Bump.

Dictionary and WD Elements 1 TB USB. This drives me mad. At first I thought it is due to my drive having 500 GB of stuff on it so I cleaned it up leaving 100 GB worth of stuff. SSDD. Every other launch of Dictionary.app causes a beach ball if the drive is asleep. The ball spins for 3-4 seconds until the drive is at full speed. I cannot find any reasonable explanation for this behavior. Save dialogs wake the drive too.

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Answer 14

May 25, 2010 2:52 PM in response to felibb

I also have the issue. Safari will cause the hard drive to spin up sometimes just when I load a webpage. I'm assuming it has something to do with an element on the webpage, maybe a java applet or a video, but this is incorrect behavior that needs to be addressed in a software update.

As you've all pointed out, the drive doesn't need to be accessed. Whatever framework is being used shouldn't just spin up all drives regardless of which drive is needed. This isn't just annoying, it's a waste of power and reduces the life of the hard drive. (The motor works hardest when it's spinning the drive up and also uses the most power.)

There's a similar thread on Macrumors -- no answers there, either.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=853024

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Answer 15

Jun 28, 2010 11:01 PM in response to malkowski

i've been wondering the same. this has to be a bug. i've been researching this issue and not one person has a definite answer on whether this is a fixable problem. i think it's possible to fix simply because it seems feasible that a drive spinning up doesn't have to hang the whole system for several seconds. some windows programs run on pc's are affected by this too. the computer is putting priority on spinning up rather than being responsive.

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