How can Prevent my FireWire drives from sleeping?

[Walter Biscardi]

Go into your Energy Settings on the Mac and ensure that you UNcheck “Put harddrives to sleep whenever possible.”

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Jeff Carpenter]

That may or may not help. I’ve had drives in the past that like to spin themselves down. As far as I can tell it’s the drive doing it and not the computer. In other words, it depends on who makes the drive. The ones I have now also do it, although I think they wait a good 30 or 40 minutes before they do, so I don’t usually have any problems with them.

You may want to contact LaCie in some way and see if they have any suggestions.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Jeff Carpenter] ”
That may or may not help. I’ve had drives in the past that like to spin themselves down.”

Wow, I’ve not heard of this. I have drives that stay on all day long, never used and never spin themselves down. LaCie, Maxtor, G-RAID and Medea, never had this issue here so long at the Energy Saver is turned completely off.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yeah, I have 2 firewire RAIDS (so, 4 drives). If I’ve been working off of one RAID for a few hours and I go to get a file off of the other I’ll have to wait for several seconds before it will open. I can hear it start to spin at that point.

They’ll both be fine as long as I’m using them, but if I ignore one for too long it will “sleep” again. I’ve never found anything in the OS to account for it so I’ve assumed it’s something inside the drive itself telling itself to take a break. (They’re all Maxtors, BTW.)

As I said, I think they wait at least half an hour in my case so it’s never really been a big deal. If Christine is having the problem every few minutes then I would say that it could be quite annoying!

[Jeremy Lee]

i have a lacie 500 gig and it goes to sleep after a few minutes. i’ve tried the energy settings deal and still no luck.
a little bit of a bummer.
i’ll try to contact lacie and see what they say.
-jeremy

[Al Davis]

I also have a Lacie 500 gig (firewire 800- Dual G5 2.7ghz.); and experienced the identical set of spin-down problems. System Preferences > Energy Saver> Sleep (set to never) solved my problem immediately. There is a default at the bottom of the window that says “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible”. Make sure that the box is UNCHECKED.

[Mark Landman]

I had the same problem and this has worked for me:

Open the terminal program (Applications>Utilities>terminal)
Type in the following:

sudo pmset -a spindown 0

Mark Landman
PM Productions
Champaign, IL