External USB disk sleeps, even if set not to sleep.

[Thrash911]

This is extremely annoying..

I have an external USB3 drive, which I use for Time Machine. In System Preferences -> Energy Saver, I have unticked Put hard disks to sleep when possible. But the system just big fat does it anyway..

My machine is a late 2012 27" iMac running 10.8.2.

Shouldn't that setting do what I want? Am I missing something here?

 

[RoelJuun]

This is extremely annoying..

I have an external USB3 drive, which I use for Time Machine. In System Preferences -> Energy Saver, I have unticked Put hard disks to sleep when possible. But the system just big fat does it anyway..

My machine is a late 2012 27" iMac running 10.8.2.

Shouldn't that setting do what I want? Am I missing something here?

I have that same problem but only after waking my iMac from sleep. From then on the disk won't fall asleep.

 

[Thrash911]

I have that same problem but only after waking my iMac from sleep. From then on the disk won't fall asleep.

Sounds like you have the opposite problem. I'm trying to keep the drive awake.

Anyway, I found a solution. I found a great little app. It creates an empty hidden file in the root of the drive, and then touches that file (updates the time stamp) every XX seconds (set by user). It works great, and I'm happy.

The app is called Keep Drive Spinning. It can be found here:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31158/keep-drive-spinning
..or here..
http://jon.stovell.info/personal/Software.html

 

[old-wiz]

I believe your problem is the drive itself - lots of external drives have their own power management and spin down on their own. Unfortunately that's the way they designed the hardware.

Your solution of touching a file on the drive is probably the best way around the problem, but will increase wear on the drive.

 

[Thrash911]

I believe your problem is the drive itself - lots of external drives have their own power management and spin down on their own. Unfortunately that's the way they designed the hardware.

Yes, I had that thought as well. Apparently the drive firmware overrides the OS setting.

Your solution of touching a file on the drive is probably the best way around the problem, but will increase wear on the drive.

You're right, it will. But is it not MUCH better, than having it spin up 4-5 times every hour? Because that's what it did before. It would wake up even if nothing is seemingly using the drive. I guess it is because of this:

http://system-log.tyr.org.uk/2012/0...-from-spinning-up-unnecessarily-on-os-x-lion/

So I thought it would be better to just keep the drive awake all the time.