Hard drive sleep

Question

Level 1

38 points

Hard drive sleep

OS 10.4.11: Both physical hard drives set to "sleep when possible" (which itself is pathetically lame, obviously-why can't you set a specific delay..?)

Anyway, they spin down after 5-15min (the time doesn't even seem to be consistent), then spin back up 30secs later! Or, sometimes they spin up a little while later, when I'm sitting there reading a webpage, or watching a movie, or doing nothing at all. Just now, they both came back on even though the monitor was dark and i'd been sitting there working at my desk for an HOUR--without touching the computer.

I guess i could understand the startup drive spinning up for little or no reason, but WHY would the other hard drive spin up..?? This does NOT happen in Windows, nor in in OS9! This is so infuriating I am ready to get in a car and drive to Cupertino, or wherever the crooks at Apple are located now, and get some answers. Is there any way to get Apple support on a G4? I doubt it.

Has anyone had this experience..? Has anyone even noticed/care what their hard drives are doing? This is beyond absurd. It's not like i'm using OS 10.0.1. Horrible bugs like this should have been worked out by 10.4.11. Thanks.

PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), G4; G5; Dual-Core iMac.

Posted on Nov 14, 2012 10:45 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

141,144 points

Nov 15, 2012 4:51 AM in response to paulpen

paulpen wrote:

Has anyone had this experience..? Has anyone even noticed/care what their hard drives are doing? This is beyond absurd.

Yes. I can't eat. I can't sleep. This is going to push me over the edge, I tell you. How do you cope? Perhaps we should form a support group.

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Answer 2

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 15, 2012 12:58 PM in response to John Galt

I thought this *was* a support group..? But that's pretty much the attitude/comment type I expected.

It's no fun to deal with low-level OS sh_t like this. Much more fun to work on glitzy visual stuff like how to minimize windows into the dock. Heh heh. Yet, proper hard drive operation is far more important that Apple's dock genie effect and other useless crap.

So, any suggestions on what's going on with my hard drives spinning down and up--when they're not even in use-- would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Answer 3

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 21, 2012 5:44 PM in response to paulpen

Anyone..? This is basic system functionality; hence it is boring but important. The fact that hard drive sleep is so flaky/unreliable/screwed up/pathetic in OS X 10.4.11 almost makes it seem like OS 10.4 (or OSX in general) was just a stopgap between release of the G4 and Apple's making, say, $60 billion and getting out of the computer business. Does to me anyway.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

239,213 points

Nov 21, 2012 10:33 PM in response to paulpen

Anyone..?

Forgive me, I lost most of my computer equipment in a break-in recently, but did you ask me never to try to help you again in the past???

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Answer 5

Anic264b

Level 1

35 points

Nov 24, 2012 7:53 AM in response to paulpen

paulpen wrote:

Anyone..? This is basic system functionality; hence it is boring but important. The fact that hard drive sleep is so flaky/unreliable/screwed up/pathetic in OS X 10.4.11 almost makes it seem like OS 10.4 (or OSX in general) was just a stopgap between release of the G4.

Sadly, people are always less curious these days. It's getting more and more a “if things «work», why even try to understand how they work or what diagnostic logs mean?” attitude, worldwide. This is a generality and is globally my feelings, including in this forum. Your question is a good one.

So, have you tried what happens with an USB drive? Does it also go to sleep?

(my 10.4 computer is currently open (unscrewed) so I can't test).

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Answer 6

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 27, 2012 12:43 PM in response to BDAqua

@BDAqua: You started with that before once in recent months. I don't really recall. (If i did and if it offended you, it would have been because you offered an idiotic, useless answer, but as i said, i really don't remember.) If you know what's going on, that would be great.

@Anic264b: I don't have a USB hard drive to test this with (and if you meant USB flash drives, i don't think those really go to sleep--nothing to spin down).

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Answer 7

Limnos

Level 10

411,217 points

Nov 27, 2012 12:55 PM in response to paulpen

It could be Spotlight indexing. It does drives individually.

I suspect getting to the root of it requires somebody who's a Unix pro, or the OSX programmer.

I'm working off memory here but I thought the advice was not to sleep drives anyway. Sure it helps with a laptop where they use up battery power but for a regular computer it's been argued it's harder on a drive to stop and start than keep on running unless you're talking a day or more.

(Hint: Don't diss BDaqua even if he does occasionally miss a detail in a post -- he's the one who really knows the stuff in this forum. 😉 )

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Answer 8

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 27, 2012 2:11 PM in response to Limnos

What you say makes sense, and that is my worry: the OS continually spinning them down, then back up, then down a few min later, then back up for no reason.... I'll be watching a movie, and half an hour into it, *both* hard drives will spin up. I realize there are certain times when the OS polls the hard drives, e.g. when you go to open a file or something, but sometimes i'll be working in Photoshop for hours and want my second physical hard drive spun down for the duration as it's not being used. Yet, it will spin up from time to time. Even OS9 worked better than this (and WinXP far better, i'm sorry to say).

I am hoping that it does not take a Unix/OSX programmer to solve this.

Btw, Spotlight indexing is turned off.

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