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7.6 firmware causing USB disc spin up/down?

Hi

I have an Airport Extreme which has a USB disc and two printers hanging off it.


The Disc has two partitions, one of which is a Time Machine backup; the other has some shared files.


Time Machine causes the disc to spin up every hour, and sometimes when I use the Finder or an Open Dialogue, the disc will spin up to access the other partition. In either case the disc spins down after about 30 seconds of idle time.


Since installing 7.6 firmware, the USB disc spins up every couple of minutes, and as soon as the disc heads have loaded and the disc has finished rattling - perhaps 2 seconds after the whirring has reached running pitch - it spins back down.


I've done all the obvious - rebooted all the Macs sharing this disc, rebooted the Airport, powered down the disc and added it back in. All to no avail.


Does anyone else here see the same behaviour, or is this just a horrible coincidence occasioned by something else I may have changed?


Thanks!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Nov 16, 2011 12:05 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Nov 16, 2011 4:19 PM

Since installing 7.6 firmware, I am observing the same behavior on my Time Capsule.

52 replies

Nov 17, 2011 11:34 AM in response to Derek Hasted1

AppleCare led me through the following steps, which solved the problem:


1. In Airport Utility, select the Time Capsule.

2. Select Manual Setup

3. File -> Export Configuration File -- save it somewhere

4. Base Station -> Restore Default Settings

5. Wait for it to restart with default settings

6. File -> Import Configuration File -- use previously saved file

7. Press the Update button

8. Wait for it to restart.


You may need to re-enter the various network passwords. Be sure to use the same ones as before, or you will have to change the password on all your computers and devices that access the Time Capsule / Base Station.

Nov 18, 2011 2:46 PM in response to DESF

DESF wrote...

AppleCare led me through the following steps, which solved the problem:


1. In Airport Utility, select the Time Capsule.

2. Select Manual Setup

3. File -> Export Configuration File -- save it somewhere

4. Base Station -> Restore Default Settings

5. Wait for it to restart with default settings

6. File -> Import Configuration File -- use previously saved file

7. Press the Update button

8. Wait for it to restart.


I tried that, and I discovered something really quite basic - if you save the settings, restart the unit and then put the same settings back, it, well, it works (or doesn't work) in exactly the same way...


I posted to say that I had a USB disk, not a Time Capsule, and this might be what is the issue.


But from here, saving the settings, restarting it, and putting those settings back was as successful as it sounds. Since none of those config values concerns the disk settings, I'm not really surprised it was nugatory. In the same way, setting the box back to factory defaults and typing in the config manually is also about as successful as a chocolate teapot.

Nov 20, 2011 5:21 PM in response to Derek Hasted1

Following advice posted here, I downgraded to 7.5.2 as well. While this did solve the problem of disk spinning up/down, the other Airport Expresses on my network did not come back online. I was able to rectify this by rebooting my Airport Extreme and each Airport Express again. Everything working perfectly now. Thanks to all posters for your help.

Nov 25, 2011 11:54 AM in response to Derek Hasted1

In case Apple Support people are keeping track of the number of people that are having problems, I wan to add that I am experiencing the exact same symptoms. Started with the update to 7.6.


I don't have a hub, I have an external drive connected directly to my airport extreme time capsule.


I'm concerned that the constant power cycling of my external drive is going to shorten its lifetime.

7.6 firmware causing USB disc spin up/down?

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