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question about external drives

twoodcc

twoodcc

macrumors P6
Original poster
Feb 3, 2005
15,307
26
Right side of wrong
ok, i've noticed that many people around here have big external drives (300 gb+).

i have a seagate 300 gb usb and firewire. and i have some of my itunes library on it (so i changed my library to the seagate, but i didn't copy my other songs over to it)

but when i song that's on the seagate come up, it takes like 5 sec or more for the drive to "warm up" or come on, or whatever.

how can i stop this?

would it be better to just put Tiger on it, and boot from it? it's an imac (intel) and i'm thinking about getting an external for my powerbook as well.

thanks
 
Does the drive go to sleep when it's not used often? My firewire hard drive goes to sleep when it's not accessed for a few minutes. I just moved stuff to my USB drive and my NAS drive. That made it so there wasn't a delay anymore.
 
I think you can turn off hard drive sleep in energy saving.

twoodcc said:
ok, i've noticed that many people around here have big external drives (300 gb+).

i have a seagate 300 gb usb and firewire. and i have some of my itunes library on it (so i changed my library to the seagate, but i didn't copy my other songs over to it)

but when i song that's on the seagate come up, it takes like 5 sec or more for the drive to "warm up" or come on, or whatever.

how can i stop this?

would it be better to just put Tiger on it, and boot from it? it's an imac (intel) and i'm thinking about getting an external for my powerbook as well.

thanks
Click to expand...
 
livingfortoday said:
Does the drive go to sleep when it's not used often? My firewire hard drive goes to sleep when it's not accessed for a few minutes. I just moved stuff to my USB drive and my NAS drive. That made it so there wasn't a delay anymore.
Click to expand...

yeah, i'm assuming it does go to sleep. but there is no way to turn it off (that i know of - that's why i need help)

so your saying if i use the usb cable instead of firewire, they there won't be a delay anymore?
 
I don't know if it's a USB v. Firewire thing, but I have two cases, one with just USB and one with FW, both made by the same company, and the USB one doesn't sleep while the FW does. I get home on Monday, and if you want, I can try plugging in the FW one through USB to see if it still sleeps that way. PM me so I don't forget, though, thanks.

twoodcc said:
yeah, i'm assuming it does go to sleep. but there is no way to turn it off (that i know of - that's why i need help)

so your saying if i use the usb cable instead of firewire, they there won't be a delay anymore?
Click to expand...
 
risc has a post here on MR that shows how to 'properly' stop the hard drives from going to sleep, and thus reducing that spin-up lag. a quick search should turn it up for you...
 
cb911 said:
risc has a post here on MR that shows how to 'properly' stop the hard drives from going to sleep, and thus reducing that spin-up lag. a quick search should turn it up for you...
Click to expand...

thanks, i'll look for it
 
cb911 said:
risc has a post here on MR that shows how to 'properly' stop the hard drives from going to sleep, and thus reducing that spin-up lag. a quick search should turn it up for you...
Click to expand...

well i searched, and i didn't find it
 
livingfortoday said:
I don't know if it's a USB v. Firewire thing, but I have two cases, one with just USB and one with FW, both made by the same company, and the USB one doesn't sleep while the FW does. I get home on Monday, and if you want, I can try plugging in the FW one through USB to see if it still sleeps that way. PM me so I don't forget, though, thanks.
Click to expand...

thanks, i guess i'll try it with the usb cable.
 
Similar setup - No Problems

I have a similar setup, but I moved the entire library to the external firewire drive. I just let my iTunes play 24/7. I have never heard a delay that way. If for some reason iTunes stops, I do get a delay when it starts back up. My only problem now is that I have filled the external 300. I was going to add a second drive, but because of your post, i don't think I want to do that.
 
twoodcc said:
can anyone help me? usb is worse than firewire. i tried the command that the other thread said to do, but i had no luck. please help
Click to expand...

You could write a quick shell script to print a directory listing of the external and then add that to your crontab to run every minute or something. Its possible this information is cached and wouldn't cause the drive to spin up, so take it for what its worth...
 
kingjr3 said:
You could write a quick shell script to print a directory listing of the external and then add that to your crontab to run every minute or something. Its possible this information is cached and wouldn't cause the drive to spin up, so take it for what its worth...
Click to expand...

i'm not that advanced yet.....but maybe if someone teaches me....
 
rick6502 said:
I have a similar setup, but I moved the entire library to the external firewire drive. I just let my iTunes play 24/7. I have never heard a delay that way. If for some reason iTunes stops, I do get a delay when it starts back up. My only problem now is that I have filled the external 300. I was going to add a second drive, but because of your post, i don't think I want to do that.
Click to expand...

yeah i thought about doing that, but i have 2 macs, and sometimes i hook up the external to the other computer. so i just kept some of the songs on the iMac, just for when i unhook the drive
 
Some more angles and questions on external fw drive

I've just set up a new lacie 250g firewire. I've had one question answered by LaCie customer support but it didn't tell me much as they gave two conficting answers and they won't answer any more questions so I guess I've used up my single allowed customer support questions :rolleyes:

I've read the link to Risc's post.

Anyhoo...

First thing that I'd like some opinions on is, is it OK for an external drive like the lacie to be spinning all day say for about 14 hours. Will it have much effect on it's lifespan.

Is it only a matter of convenience to have the drive not need to spin up or does it actually reduce the lifespan with increased wear and tear. At which point does one reach a level of diminishing returns. For example it's probably better for a drive to spin up and down twice a day if it is used for a total of 1 hour than it is to have it spin up once and stay on for 14 hours. But there must come a point when it's worse. For example spinning up and down 20 times a day is prolly worse than staying on all day.

How long should a hd like this go for before a catastrophic fatal failure? 5 years? more, less?
 
dogbone said:
I've just set up a new lacie 250g firewire. I've had one question answered by LaCie customer support but it didn't tell me much as they gave two conficting answers and they won't answer any more questions so I guess I've used up my single allowed customer support questions :rolleyes:

I've read the link to Risc's post.

Anyhoo...

First thing that I'd like some opinions on is, is it OK for an external drive like the lacie to be spinning all day say for about 14 hours. Will it have much effect on it's lifespan.

Is it only a matter of convenience to have the drive not need to spin up or does it actually reduce the lifespan with increased wear and tear. At which point does one reach a level of diminishing returns. For example it's probably better for a drive to spin up and down twice a day if it is used for a total of 1 hour than it is to have it spin up once and stay on for 14 hours. But there must come a point when it's worse. For example spinning up and down 20 times a day is prolly worse than staying on all day.

How long should a hd like this go for before a catastrophic fatal failure? 5 years? more, less?
Click to expand...

i'm not sure, but doesn't your internal hard drive spin all the time, unless you have "put hard drives to sleep when possible" selected
 
dogbone said:
I suppose so... I've only recencly uncheck this box and then rechecked and unchecked it...I might post a poll about this.
Click to expand...

ok, that might be a good idea.

you said you read that other post (risc). did you try the command?
 
twoodcc said:
ok, that might be a good idea.

you said you read that other post (risc). did you try the command?
Click to expand...

I haven't tried it yet because I had a look at the pmset manual but I didn't see an -s command. I wanted to make sure I could undo it if necessary. I noticed the command was 'disksleep 0' and I assumed that 'disksleep 1' would undo it, but now I'm not sure if the '0' refers to a time in minutes or if it is a binary on/off command.
 
dogbone said:
I haven't tried it yet because I had a look at the pmset manual but I didn't see an -s command. I wanted to make sure I could undo it if necessary. I noticed the command was 'disksleep 0' and I assumed that 'disksleep 1' would undo it, but now I'm not sure if the '0' refers to a time in minutes or if it is a binary on/off command.
Click to expand...

oh. well i tried it on my intel iMac and it didn't work
 
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