Spin down external USB hard drive?

[paulobrad]

I have an IDE hard drive in an enclosure powered by the mains and connected to my Mac Mini (running Tiger) by USB.

The drive spins constantly whenever it has power, regardless of whether it's mounted or any read/write is taking place. I'd like it to only spin when I'm accessing it and to spin down after say 5 mins activity or the Mac goes to sleep.

Any ideas? Like I say this is a 3.5 inch IDE drive in an enclosure I bought separately.

Cheers.

 

[TheReef]

In Energy Saver tick the checkbox to spin down your hard disk when it's not being used if it isn't already.

 

[paulobrad]

In Energy Saver tick the checkbox to spin down your hard disk when it's not being used if it isn't already.

Thanks but I already have that ticked and it never spins down.

 

[nando2323]

Thanks but I already have that ticked and it never spins down.

There is a pro tool that comes with the developer package I think on the apple site that can do just this I forget what it's called though. I will warn you though it doesn't recognize some external drives though especially if they are going through a hub of some sort. I think it's called Spin something or other it's on the apple site maybe under support. I am at work right now so I can't see it here on this crappy Dell that I am using.

 

[bearcatrp]

I would be interested in this but for my internal drives in my mac pro.