Seagate Momentus XT 750GB not spinning down at idle under MacOS Lion

What makes you think it does not spin down? I have the same drive on my 2009 MacBook Pro and I can definitely tell when after I let the laptop sit for a while but without going into sleep, I do something like open an application, I see a lag, and feel the drive spins up.

Yes I can definitely hear the drive spinning up. I was able to record the sound of the drive spnning up through the palm rest by standing my iPhone vertically on it. And it was after the laptop had sat idle for awhile.

I've just got the drive last week. Maybe Seagate fixed it secretly.

swankallcity wrote:

You have the 750GB and are you sure it is actually spinning down?

Before, if I left my MBP sit idle normally the stock drive would spin down. Now with the Momentus XT 750GB I can leave it for a while, the MBP does not usually go to sleep. I can put my ear to the chassis and hear the drive spinning and when launch something I hear the drive access, but I do not hear it spin up. Therefore it was aready spinning.

To see the difference, force the laptop to sleep, then put your ear on the chassis and lsten for the spin up.

I have the 750 and the 500 (in a different machine) they both spin down when the lid is closed, within 2 to 3 seconds, the 750 is extremely quiet and can be hard to hear.

swankallcity wrote:

Right, mine spins down when the lid is closed or when I force it to sleep. That is not the problem I am trying to explain.

Under normal use the disk will spin down when idle, then later the machine will go to sleep. As I mentioned in my first post, neither of these happen since installing the Momentus XT 750. I have to either close the lid or choose "Sleep" from the Apple menu to force the laptop to sleep.

Csound1, will your machine spin down or go to sleep by itself when idle?

Idle? what's that 🙂

My machine goes to sleep at the interval I set it to when idle, it also goes to sleep when I close the lid, I have not selected 'Put Hard Drives to Sleep When Possible' so the drive does not spin down until it is asleep, but that is by choice.

Hi Swankallcity,

I'm having the same problem, but even worse than just not spinning down.

I've bought a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB, installed in my MacBook Pro 15" mid 2010 (which came with a Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM), created single partition and restored my OS (Lion 10.7.3) straight from TimeMachine (4th generation TimeCapsule).

Everything worked like a charm, until I noticed the MBP wouldn't wake up from sleep.

So if I put the computer to sleep, it works just fine - it spins down the drive and the white light starts flashing. But if I leave the computer like that overnight, next day it doesn't wake up. I can hear the drive spinning, but nothing happens, so I have to help power button to shutdown and then start it again.

I changed my settings to go to sleep after a minute idle, and it turns off the screen, the while light comes up but doesn't flash and the disk keeps spinning. If I press anything it wakes up though, but I'm not sure if it will after a few hours.

So reading about the issue on every single forum out there, I decided to clean install Lion. I'm doing it as I write this and hope it will fix the problem. I think I'm not going to restore from TimeMachine even after a clean install, just to see how it goes.

I can't believe it's a compatibility issue as the hard drive which came with the MBP is a Seagate Momentus as well (just older and not hybrid). They actually physically look exactly the same, but one reading "Seagate Momentus 500GB" and the other "Seagate Momentus XT 750GB".

I have another XT running in a HP Elitebook 8460p with Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit (bought both together at the same store) and it runs beautifully, no problems what so ever.

I will let you know how it goes as soon as I finish the install and my testings 🙂

Good news.

After installing Lion from scratch and NOT restoring my TimeMachine backup, everything works just fine 🙂

Hi there,

I have to do some more testing when I'm back home, will let you know!

Ok, here is what happens now.

I've changed my settings to go to sleep in 5 minutes when using battery power and left the computer idle for the 5 minutes, running Safari, Firefox, iTunes, App Store and Mac OS Preferences.

After 5 minutes, the display goes black, the white light in front of the MacBook Pro comes on and I can still hear the disk spinning (or maybe the fans, can't be sure). After about 5 minutes, the white light finally starts flashing and the MBP goes silent.

Have done that about 5 times, and the MBP wakes up like a charm!

Hope this helps 🙂

PS.: "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" is ticket.

to swankallcity

Hello,

I am experiencing exactly the same issues. I drives me nuts, really. I do believe is because of the HDD since with my previous Hitachi HDD I never experienced such a behaviour.

I have a Macbook Pro Mid 2009, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 8GB RAM, I did a completely fresh install of Lion (installation made by an Apple Authorized Service Center!)

Any ideas on how to solve it? Should I try exchanging the HDD, maybe I have a faulty one? Or it's just an incompatibility of these Momentum XT HDD with Macbook Pro and Lion?

Any help very much appreciated!