Seagate FreeAgent|Desk drives sleeping
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From: Doug Jantzer on 29 Nov 2009 23:07 I have 5 1TB Seagate FreeAgent|Desk external USB HDs connected to my unibody 2.93.GHz MBP, OSX 10.6.2. I have UNchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box in the Energy Saver pref pane. But these drives insist on going into some sort of sleep mode after a period of not accessing them. When they are in this mode, any activity in the finder locks up the entire system for 30-60 seconds until the drives come back to their senses. This is getting really annoying. I downloaded the Seagate Diagnostics Mac utility, but it can't even see the drives... thanks a lot Seagate. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Does anyone have a suggestion on fixing it. Thanks. Doug
From: Nick Naym on 30 Nov 2009 01:11 In article doug-02D35E.20073629112009(a)news-40.giganews.com, Doug Jantzer at doug(a)gmail.com.invalid wrote on 11/29/09 11:07 PM: > I have 5 1TB Seagate FreeAgent|Desk external USB HDs connected to my > unibody 2.93.GHz MBP, OSX 10.6.2. > > I have UNchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box > in the Energy Saver pref pane. > > But these drives insist on going into some sort of sleep mode after a > period of not accessing them. When they are in this mode, any activity > in the finder locks up the entire system for 30-60 seconds until the > drives come back to their senses. > > This is getting really annoying. > > I downloaded the Seagate Diagnostics Mac utility, but it can't even see > the drives... thanks a lot Seagate. > > Has anyone else seen this behavior? > > Does anyone have a suggestion on fixing it. > > Thanks. > > Doug There are a few forum threads over at Seagate mentioning this. One I saw (see http://is.gd/57rAq) goes on for six pages. Though I didn't slog through it all, the very last post (by a moderator) in the thread suggests: Just to recap, 3 basic steps for troubleshooting this issue: 1) Install the updated FA Desktop software for Mac. That software will divert the "responsibility" for setting the sleep interval to the MacOS operating system rather than the FA software. 2) If that fails to resolve the issue, safely eject the drive from the Mac, connect the drive to a PC and use the FA software on the PC and use it to set the sleep interval to what you want it to be (probably "Never" is best), then safely remove it and take the drive back to your Mac. 3) If these steps fail, contact Technical Support for updated information. -- iMac (24", 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 320 GB HDD) � OS X (10.5.8)
From: thepixelfreak on 30 Nov 2009 13:40 On 2009-11-29 20:07:37 -0800, Doug Jantzer <doug(a)gmail.com.invalid> said: > I have 5 1TB Seagate FreeAgent|Desk external USB HDs connected to my > unibody 2.93.GHz MBP, OSX 10.6.2. > > I have UNchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box > in the Energy Saver pref pane. > > But these drives insist on going into some sort of sleep mode after a > period of not accessing them. When they are in this mode, any activity > in the finder locks up the entire system for 30-60 seconds Yup, it's annoying. My question to Apple (and I have posted on the support forum to no avail) is this from my previously unanswered post to this newsgroup. I posted some time ago the following... SBBOD = Spinning Beach Ball of Death Could someone who understands MacOS X internals please explain to me why the finder needs to wait for an external Firewire drive to spin up to: 1. Open an app from the doc. (sbbod until the FW drive spins up) 2. Quit an app via right clicking the dock icon of the app. (shows 'Application not Responding' until FW drive spins up then 'quit' is the available choice) 3. Get a running program to respond. (sbbod then app responds as usual when FW drive spins up) Let me set the scene. I do not have 'put drives to sleep' in energy saver. Spotlight is configured to ignore all of my external volumes. None of my apps use the external volumes for scratch or anything else. I rarely if ever directly save to an external volume from any application. I cannot change the behavior of the FW drive going into Stand-By mode (I've checked with Seagate and the feature is not changeable via firmware or dip-switch/jumper settings) My only thought is poor filesystem buffer cache management. Problem is even that doesn't make sense. If I haven't read from or written to the external drives there shouldn't be ANY in memory buffers associated with the now in stand-by state firewire drive. The SBBOD usually only takes 5-10 seconds to go away and Finder behavior to return to normal. I know it sounds 'petty' but it definitely is a flaw in what is supposed to be (and usually is) a very responsive GUI. I've experienced this annoying behavior with the standard Apple apps (Mail, Address Book, iCal, iTunes etc) and my 3rd party apps (Photoshop CS3, Excel, Word, Cisco VPN client. I'm thinking about writing a crontab entry to 'touch' the FW drive every few minutes to keep it spun up as a workaround. Running 10.6.1 and hoping Apple would have gotten it right with this release. -- thepixelfreak
From: E Z Peaces on 30 Nov 2009 15:08 Doug Jantzer wrote: > I have 5 1TB Seagate FreeAgent|Desk external USB HDs connected to my > unibody 2.93.GHz MBP, OSX 10.6.2. > > I have UNchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box > in the Energy Saver pref pane. > > But these drives insist on going into some sort of sleep mode after a > period of not accessing them. When they are in this mode, any activity > in the finder locks up the entire system for 30-60 seconds until the > drives come back to their senses. > > This is getting really annoying. > > I downloaded the Seagate Diagnostics Mac utility, but it can't even see > the drives... thanks a lot Seagate. > > Has anyone else seen this behavior? > > Does anyone have a suggestion on fixing it. > > Thanks. > > Doug I encountered it when I moved a disk from one Firewire box to another, so the sleep instruction must originate in the box. As I recall, when it delayed my Mac, the delay could be 5 to 36 seconds. The disk had a maximum spinup time of 5 seconds, so something else was involved. I wish I could keep the disk awake. Spinning takes very little power, and spinning up probably means wear and tear as well as a delay.
From: E Z Peaces on 30 Nov 2009 15:17
thepixelfreak wrote: > On 2009-11-29 20:07:37 -0800, Doug Jantzer <doug(a)gmail.com.invalid> said: > >> I have 5 1TB Seagate FreeAgent|Desk external USB HDs connected to my >> unibody 2.93.GHz MBP, OSX 10.6.2. >> >> I have UNchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" box >> in the Energy Saver pref pane. >> >> But these drives insist on going into some sort of sleep mode after a >> period of not accessing them. When they are in this mode, any activity >> in the finder locks up the entire system for 30-60 seconds > > Yup, it's annoying. My question to Apple (and I have posted on the > support forum to no avail) is this from my previously unanswered post to > this newsgroup. I posted some time ago the following... > > > SBBOD = Spinning Beach Ball of Death > > Could someone who understands MacOS X internals please explain to me why > the finder needs to wait for an external Firewire drive to spin up to: > > 1. Open an app from the doc. (sbbod until the FW drive spins up) > 2. Quit an app via right clicking the dock icon of the app. (shows > 'Application not Responding' until FW drive spins up then > 'quit' is the available choice) > 3. Get a running program to respond. (sbbod then app responds as usual > when FW drive spins up) > > Let me set the scene. I do not have 'put drives to sleep' in energy > saver. Spotlight is configured to ignore all of my external volumes. > None of my apps use the external volumes for scratch or anything else. I > rarely if ever directly save to an external volume from any application. > I cannot change the behavior of the FW drive going into Stand-By mode > (I've checked with Seagate and the feature is not changeable via > firmware or dip-switch/jumper settings) > > My only thought is poor filesystem buffer cache management. Problem is > even that doesn't make sense. If I haven't read from or written to the > external drives there shouldn't be ANY in memory buffers associated with > the now in stand-by state firewire drive. > > The SBBOD usually only takes 5-10 seconds to go away and Finder behavior > to return to normal. I know it sounds 'petty' but it definitely is a > flaw in what is supposed to be (and usually is) a very responsive GUI. > I've experienced this annoying behavior with the standard Apple apps > (Mail, Address Book, iCal, iTunes etc) and my 3rd party apps (Photoshop > CS3, Excel, Word, Cisco VPN client. I'm thinking about writing a crontab > entry to 'touch' the FW drive every few minutes to keep it spun up as a > workaround. > > Running 10.6.1 and hoping Apple would have gotten it right with this > release. I wonder if a utility could be written to keep an external disk awake by having the Mac ask it something every few minutes. |