So basically, my hard drive is dying (clicking/chirping noises, random freezes), but for now it seems to keep working and until it finally breaks, I want to put as little load on it as possible and was wondering whether its better to put the machine to sleep at night or turn it off completely? I realise it's fairly minor by itself, so in addition I'm trying to stream as much video as possible instead of downloading, I've got it constantly hooked up to an external making hourly TM backups, also got a carbon copy bootable clone made.
I have a Macbook Pro that's about two years and 4 months old, running the latest version of Leopard. I was problem free for about two years until last October when my MBP suddenly wouldn't boot up (hung at the grey apple screen). I took it to my University's computer repair center, and they said either there was a corrupt OS file, or my HDD was going bad. I went home and booted from my OSX disc and did a full erase and install. My computer worked fine for a few months following the erase and install
I'm on an iBook G4 running OS X 10.4.11. It comes with about 50GB of hard drive space and 512MB of RAM. I bought it around 2006 or so. Also, I have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, so I hope you'll be patient with me.
1) It's been running extremely slowly, especially when Firefox is running. Rainbow pinwheels when switching between programs, when switching between tabs in Firefox, when opening new windows in Firefox or typing search terms into Google, etc. It runs faster immediately after I restart, but then will slow down after a few days of running the machine. (It also runs a little faster when my external drive (which holds my 19GB iTunes library) is disconnected.)..................
I recently bought a new Mac mini and Seagate goflex 3TB external hard drive. The computer is awesome but if I have the external hard drive plugged in, it messes with the restart/shutdown. The mac will act like it's powering down and go to the blank white screen but will never turn off and shows the little gray lines that go in that circular motion at the bottom of the screen. If I disconnect the USB from the Mac then it completes its power down. I've tried the suggestions of repairing disks or disk permissions, as well as resetting the PRAM, which have worked sometimes but the the problem reoccurs. I've also tried ejecting the external hard drive before shutting down on the Mac but I'll either get an error message or nothing happens and then the above shutdown issue occurs.
Why does this happen and what can I do so that I can always have the external plugged in and not have to manually unplug it so the Mac can shutdown?
I have a 2011 iMac which i've loved using. I bought a Seagate goflex external harddrive so I could start using time machine. I've noticed that whenver I power my iMac down it will sit on the grey screen just before shutting off for a long time. In fact, it will not actually shut down until i unplug my external hard drive. As soon as I unplug my harddrive the mac starts thinking again and shuts down within seconds. Why it would do this. I now hard plug my harddrive in because of this, which is kinda of dumb since I bought it to work as a time machine.
I have a new 17" MBP and recently it stopped going to sleep on its own. I can force it to sleep my apple menu or shutting the lid. I have tried everything I can think of... all programs closed, nothing running (to my knowledge) and in activity monitor it shows the disk activity writting every 20 seconds or so... my only conclusion is that it's not letting the HD become inactive long enough to send to sleep... can someone please help me with this?
i dunno if this is new or everyone already knows bout it, but when i stacked one macbook air on top of the other with the bottom one sleeping, the one stacked on top also goes to sleep even if it was turned on. i tried this on a friends macbook air and this happens. is it coz of the magnetic fields in the hard drive? anyone with 2 macbook airs on hand should definitely try this.
My computer (MBP 5,5) makes this sound several times throughout a day of use. It sounds exactly like the little "click" sound the computer makes, when i close the lid and have it go into sleep mode. I guess it's the hard drive going to sleep sound? If i'm right, i really don't understand why the hard drive goes to sleep at these random times. I've disabled that in System Preferences - at least i think so. It's this option, right?: [URL] Also, my MBP is always (only use it as a desktop with an external monitor connected to it) on a mStand on my table, so it can't be the Sudden Motion Sensor either.
Lately I've noticed that whenever I put my Mac to sleep, I lose a few megabytes. At first I didn't think anything about it. Until one day I let sleep for a while I was doing something, and came back to, and saw that I had lost about 300 megabytes. While it was in sleep, no applications were running and nothing was downloading. My mac is Macbook pro, 3 years old, 120 gigabyte, 2 gb of ram, 2.33 Ghz Intel Core duo, Model Identifier: 2,2, and Serial Number:W86481HGW0H Right now it's running leopard. I'm about to upgrade to Snow Leopard. So why would it lose this hard drive space when it's in sleep mode? By the way, I bought it used one year ago. So I've only had it a year. I haven't downloaded anything from any untrustworthy websites. I only download things from trusted sources(i.e. itunes.) Please help. Right now my only solution is to keep a close eye on it, and make sure that it does not go to sleep!
I have a new MBP 13". When I'm using the Mac it's mostly connected to AC. Over night it's mostly sleeping without the AC connected. My question is, if I should let it sleep at night or should I shut down the Mac regarding to maximize the battery life?
I have a Macbook (late 2011) 15" 2.2 i7 pro. I noticed this after upgrading my RAM with 2 x 4gb Corsair DDR3 1333MHZ Ram (stock 2 x 2gb)Upon closing the macbook lid, the computer would goto sleep (the pulsing heartbeat light would be on). The problem is, if the macbook was in sleep mode for an extended period of time (I've tested and something over 15 minuites) the computer would shutdown. I have tried searching for similar problems and unable to find something exactly the same. I have reset the SMC and PRAM but this problem is still there.Obviously it would sound like the RAM but I am having no problems doing anything with the mbp, the only thing is this sleep turned into shutdown problem.
I received my mba in the mail about two weeks ago, and since I have only shut it down twice. Once on a system update on the day I received it, and the other just five minutes ago. This last shutdown took a good 5 minutes, and I'm not exaggerating; 5 minutes, if not more. It took long enough for me to close the lid, went outside to smoke a cigarette, came back and the screen was still light blue with a "loading" animation toward the center bottom of the screen. I finally got tired of waiting and left it alone with it's lid closed and watched a program on hulu before checking it again. Then, it wouldn't turn on. I hit the power button and nothing. I held it down; nothing.
I had to hit the power button with my mba connected to the power source before it would turn on. The battery wasn't dead; it had over 90% left. But, when I did it again, the shutdown was instant...less than a second, and the boot up took less than 5 seconds. So, it got me thinking. My mba boots so fast, is it beneficial to always keep my mba on sleep? I can live with a 5 - 10 seconds wait before I get to use my computer. Does it hurt or decreases the lifespan if I shutdown and boot up on a daily basis? Which brings me back to the discussion I'd like to start on this thread....again for most of you. Shutdown or sleep? Which do you do, and why?
Is it OK to leave the MB on sleep. On my previous Laptop I never shut it down unless it was necessary, im talking the computer never shutdown for like 2 or 3 weeks of use. Not continuous use, I use the laptop 3,4 maybe 5 times a day and its kinda hard for me to wait for the boot up, i usually just close it (sleep) and go away. Can I damage my MB doing that?
I go to shut it down from the apple menu, it attempts to go through all the stages needed for a shut down, the screen goes black like normal, and then it restarts again (so, while, it nearly gets to the end of shut down, it never quite makes it, and starts up again!) The same thing happens when I decide to restart - there is no pause between shutting down and restarting, indicating that it does nor restart at all.
It does not sleep either. I put the lid down and everything is still going inside the laptop!
I hope that's a good enough explanation of what's happening!
The only way I can shut the computer down is by pressing the power button in the top right hand corner of my macbook - forcing a shut down.
I've tried resetting the PRAM and repairing disk utility but it has done absolutely nothing.
I was reading a thread about Snow Leopard bootup times, and one of the posters said that what with the fast wake up of Macs, shutting down is useless unless an update requires it or you use bootcamp. {URL]. So, my question to you is, do you sleep your computer or shut it down when you finish using it? I've only had mine for a week and personally I shut mine down, but maybe thats a hangover from the Windows part of my life.
During start up I get the apple logo and everything boots although it takes forever, the apple logo goes away screen goes blue, and sometimes it loads to the login screen about 10 mins later, and sometimes it just sits there. - During restart, it shuts down makes all the appropriate sounds, screen goes dark, and all you hear is a residual humming from the inside under the keyboard, and then never restarts. (You have to force shutdown) - Same story as above with both shutdown, and sleep.
The only way to get it to load successfully is in safe mode, but even then it still wont do the above problem correctly, it just at least starts.
- Resetting the PRAM, Holding power button for 5 seconds until repeating flashes, I've tried reinstalling snow leopard 5 times, I've checked for updates, I've repaired disk permissions, I've repaired the disk, I've even tried stepping the OSX back down to 10.3(The original operating software for this MB)
For the last few days, since carrying out a software update (dont know what update!) when I select "sleep" from the main apple menu my screen goes to sleep but my hard drive keeps running, how do I correct this so the whole thing goes to sleep?
a couple of days before my wireless track pad and keyboard would have trouble connecting when computer is waken after sleep mode. Then one day my mac mini just suddenly stopped going in a physical sleep state. When I go to the apple sign and put the mac mini to sleep the screen turns black like usual but once its put to "sleep" the light indicator on the mac mini will not blink neither will I hear the hardrive slow down. whats going on. This is the standard $700 model mac mini mid 2011.
As I've read in many threads there's no way to turn off the blue light, even when my imac is off or sleep, and even thou the hdd is (or might) be asleep, the light always stays on... over all this is not a huge deal, but since the imac is in my room sometimes the light it's a little annoying. I was wondering if anyone here has an external hard drive that goes to sleep and even the lights turn off completely..
Specially if it's a famous brand.. like WD or anything along those lines.. since I'm looking to upgrade my external HDD i figured it's a good to know.. otherwise i'm going to just upgrade to the 1tb Lacie.. I'm considering the 1tb "My Book" because even thou I read that the 500gb had a lot of issues apparently the 1tb one is a lot better.. has anyone has had this drive? Any issues?
I will try to be a little more clear in describing this one: I use a 500GB USB Hard Drive for storing Music, Videos, Photos, etc. I have my entire library for iTunes, iPhoto in there. Here's the problem. When I mount the drive to use it, it works fine. If I stop iTunes for 5 minutes or so and then try to open up another file from the drive I can hear the hard drive start to spin inside the enclosure, but it just hangs, forcing me to unplug it from the USB port, giving me the fail to eject warning message. When I re-mount it again it works fine, but I imagine doing this is damaging to the files and folders. Anybody else had this problem? Is there any way to adjust how much time of inactivity will cause the drive to sleep?
I just got a new Mac Mini, and I notice that when it's in sleep mode, the hard disk is constantly spinning up and then spinning down again. It spins down roughly every thirty seconds, the power light starts blinking in the "I'm sleeping" pattern, but then the drive spins back up in a matter of seconds and the light is on constantly until the next spin-down. I've tried turning off the network, disconnecting the display, fiddling with the Energy Saver settings, quitting all programs, all to no avail. All updates are installed.
when occurs a suspension of hard drive activity, manually or after a period of inactivity, this suspension seems to be incomplete (a ventilator continue to run) therefore my mac (power-mac G5, OS 10.4.11) is unable to restart, no possible action from the keyboard (I must shut down and restart)
Info: PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.4), & PowerBook (10.3.9)
I've heard a few different point of views one this. I've heard its better to shut down because you won't be using energy then and not as much stress on component. I have also heard its better to sleep because of the energy required for boot and when you shut down and start up, the heating and cooling of the components make the contract and expand which will put stress on them. Power isn't one of my major concern, my major concern is which will make a Mac Pro last longer. With an SSD as the boot drive, it won't need as much power as a mechanical drive so I don't need to worry about that. Which is better? Also, which do you prefer?
I bought an optibay clone and put it in my 2010 Macbook i5. I have an SSD residing in my standard hard drive bay (because of potential hibernate issues) and the 5400rpm Apple drive + optibay clone in the Superdrive bay. How do I sleep/spin down the 5400rpm drive ? Unmounting doesn't seem to help. Put disk to sleep option in preferences is selected, but it keeps spinning and spinning. What options do we have for sleeping/spinning down this drive within OSX ?
The last couple of times I have woken my MBP up a box has popped up with a big red sign in the middle saying my external hard drive was removed unexpectedly and could have caused loss of data. I know this is not healthy and I would like to stop it doing this as soon as possible. It is connected via firewire 800 and is a western digital 250 gig my book pro if that makes any difference. I close the lid of my laptop with it still on and connected and everything is supposed to sleep. It used to work fine, I would open the lid and everything would wake up and I could do what I was doing before with no error messages and the hard drive would still be mounted on the desktop.
I'm on an early 2008 mac pro - used to be on a Powerbook G4. I have a 300 GB LaCie d2 Extreme external HD connected via firewire 800. Both are in 10.5.2. While on my powerbook, the drive behaved normally - fell asleep after no use, then awakened when I needed to access something. On my new mac pro, the drive behaves strangely. I only use it for backup, so it's only accessed once a day. The rest of the time I do not use it. When it's not in use, the drive sporadically wakes and sleeps. I've tried to pinpoint the cause to no avail.
I've tried all the usual suspects: browsing the forums, checking the "hard disk sleep" preference in energy saver, switching the firewire 800 cable with usb and firewire 400, watching activity monitor to see if there's a program accessing the drive (haven't found anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there). None of it works.
I've bought 8 months ago external hard drive Seagate FreeAgent 1TB (USB 2.0 7200 RPM 32MB cache), till last week disk was plugged in to pc and everything was great. Now its plugged to mac and the problem is, the hard drive all the time going to sleep after minute or two. I've turned off sleeping disk in system pref., also i used command sudo pmset -a disk sleep 0. App from seagate is a piece of **** I've made full format from ntfs to mac hfs. Nothing helped! Is there any solution to resolve my problem?
I'm running out of space on my Mac Mini's disk because of all my iTunes video files. I am thinking about buying an enclosure for my spare 1 TB hard drive, and using it as the location of my iTunes library, but I wondered how it works with the Mac Mini's energy-savings mode. My Mini is set to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity, then wake when iTunes content is requested by my Apple TV or Airport Express. I like it, because it's very energy efficient that way! My question is, will the disks also sleep along with my computer, and will they wake properly when the computer wakes?
