IMac :: External Hard Drive & System Sleep
Oct 6, 2009
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?
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Dec 20, 2009
So, I just had the original 300 GB hard drive fail in my aluminum 24" inch Mac running the latest update of Leopard. I wasn't able to save it using diskwarrior (diskwarrior said it was some sort of mechanical failure) but I was able to recover most of the data from it by booting from an external hard-drive.
So I went out and purchased a brand new Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive. The install went fine, it found the drive partitioned it and installed Leopard successful. Then is crashed and disappeared when I left it alone to run all the software updates. I came back and the computer was stuck on "Restart Required" after downloading all the updates.
I went to hit restart now, and the system just hanged, wouldn't do anything. So I hard powered down the system and restarted it. It came up with nothing, just stuck on the White Screen of Death. So I plugged the external drive back in and booted from it. Mac OSX couldn't find the drive and diskwarrior would crash if I tried to run it. I tried to boot up from the OSX start-up disk and it couldn't find the drive either.
So I took the case apart and made sure all the connections were solid and the drive was mounted correctly. Everything looked fine so I plugged it in and it started up fine. Finished the updates and the iMac ran great. So I thought maybe it was overheating, so I've installed smcfancontrol and started to monitor the temp of the drive. I also took the mac apart again and sucked out any dust in the fans or vents. The drive never goes over a 105 F, so it doesn't seem to be overheating.
However, this is where the problem is consistent: everytime the iMac goes into sleep mode, it crashes and the iMac is unable to find the hard-drive again. Unless I unplug it completely for 5 minutes or so. Once I unplug it, it finds the drive and operates like a champ.
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Apr 20, 2009
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?
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Sep 18, 2007
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.
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May 29, 2008
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.
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Feb 22, 2010
Is it possible to have an external HDD connected to an iMac or Mac Mini on a regular basis? I have a Power Mac G4, and it's always had issues with going into sleep mode when there is any external storage connected via the USB 2.0 ports (and I've put in replacement ports to try and remedy this, to no avail). The main problem is that once the system wakes up, it thinks you've improperly removed the device. Apple told me, way back, that this was normal and to just eject all external storage before going into sleep mode. Which is a pain, but looking at a new desktop Mac I would like to just get the tiny, base HDD and use a beefy external for all my media - unless this is still an acceptable norm with new macs.
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Oct 17, 2010
I have an old external hard drive (5yrs) that I used on a G4. I tried to plug it into my 10.5.8 and it will not register. I tried it on 3 different computers. I am tiring to use it for work (school teacher). I have an older Mac at work that it did show up on so I can get the info off.
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Feb 10, 2009
After a couple of years of lurking around, searching for myself, I finally come out and ask for some help. My questions are intertwined, and I am unsure how to break up what into what. I am lost; forgive me my ignorance.The Scenario: I just got a Mac Box Set, and want to install Leopard.1. A new 400GB Passport. Existing 350GB--relatively new, getting a little glitchy. Only has copies of pix/video data on it.2. One MacMini, one Macbook Pro.3. Would like to backup bootable volumes for both macs.
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Jul 2, 2009
Just a quick question regarding external hard drives.
Does it matter what file system the hard drive is set to for me to be able to transfer data between the uMBP and the hard drive?
Currently, my 1TB external hard drive is in NTFS, but i understand Mac use FAT32? (Please correct me if I'm wrong)
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Aug 25, 2010
I've been using a LaCie Quadra 2TB Hard drive for a little over a month now.
I've been noticing in that time that whenever I have the HD mounted my system seems to run slower in that it has lots of sporadic hang ups. I get the spinning beachball in all sorts of programs from Safari to Microsoft Word.
I am of course assuming the Hard drive is to blame, so I was wondering:
Can running an external hard drive (for use with Time Machine and general storage) slow a system down (in particular applications)?
The hard drive is a 7200rpm drive and its connected via firewire 800 if that is of any importance.
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Sep 19, 2008
I have an Iomega UltraMax 750Gb External Hard Drive set up to back up my MacBook Pro. Time Machine uses this hard drive perfectly with no problems. However whenever I want to use the drive to move files around with XP the drive does not show up in my computer. XP recognizes the connection of the hard drive and shows the name of the hard drive connected to the computer when you look at the USB BUSes but still it is not in My Computer. I have everything up to date. I have even partitioned the External Hard Drive so part of it wasn't even touched by Time Machine. Is this a problem with Time Machine formatting my external hard drive to work only for Mac
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Mar 20, 2009
I have a Toshiba 160 GB USB external HDD (no power supply required) that I use simply as a backup for some Windows programs when I am using my virtual machine. It required a double USB cable and its icon showed on both the Windows and iMAC screen until a day or so ago. It is a functioning unit when I put it on a separate PC. I have not been able to correct the problem and in viewing some of the forum items I keep seeing suggestions to view the 'System Preferences --> general' - I do not see a 'general' nor any reference in the 'apple' that refers to hard drives (external or internal).
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Jun 19, 2014
When my iMac 27" is in sleep mode I have noticed that the hard drive spins up very regularly every 4 or 5 minutes. Also when placed in sleep, the monitor takes about 30 seconds to go black. It also wakes on its own for no apparent reason. No new software has been added, only normal updates, running Lion. Time machine backup is done every couple weeks.
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Mar 30, 2009
I am looking to get an external HDD for a modified mac mini. I am thinking of removing the 120gb std hdd in the mini and replacing this with a SSD, coupled with 4GB of RAM to speed things up (will be 2.26ghz). Im guessing the capacity of this will be aroung 60-80 gb and will only be used for the OS.
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Apr 12, 2010
I am a new convert to Mac, and loving every minute. I use a 21.5 iMac and my wife uses a MacBook. I am trying to figure out the best way up set up an external harddrive system that will automatically backup both Macs. But I am also trying to figure out if I can store and access music through iTunes for both Macs.
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Aug 16, 2010
I'm selling my old Powerbook G4. Before I let it go, I want to wipe the hard drive and reinstall OS 10.4. I also would like to run disk first aid because I suspect there may be some corruption. The problem: I still have the original system install DVDs that came with the laptop, but the DVD drive no longer works. It just spins the disks for a bit then spits them back out. I do have an external USB hard drive with plenty of free space. Is there a way I can copy the install DVDs (there's a Disc 1 and Disc 2) to the external hard drive, then boot from that drive and treat it like I'm installing from the DVDs? I also have my new MacBook Pro with a working DVD drive. Can I make my Powerbook boot from a CD in the MacBook's drive? If not, how else can I wipe my system and reinstall the OS without a working DVD drive?
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Dec 21, 2009
I just had the original 300 GB hard drive fail in my aluminum 24" inch iMac running the latest update of Leopard. I wasn't able to save it using diskwarrior (diskwarrior said it was some sort of mechanical failure) but I was able to recover most of the data from it by booting from an external hard-drive.
So I went out and purchased a brand new Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive. The install went fine, it found the drive partitioned it and installed Leopard successful. Then is crashed and disappeared when I left it alone to run all the software updates. I came back and the computer was stuck on "Restart Required" after downloading all the updates. I went to hit restart now, and the system just hanged, wouldn't do anything. So I hard powered down the system and restarted it. It came up with nothing, just stuck on the White Screen of Death. So I plugged the external drive back in and booted from it. Mac OSX couldn't find the drive and diskwarrior would crash if I tried to run it. I tried to boot up from the OSX start-up disk and it couldn't find the drive either.
So I took the case apart and made sure all the connections were solid and the drive was mounted correctly. Everything looked fine so I plugged it in and it started up fine. Finished the updates and the iMac ran great.
So I thought maybe it was overheating, so I've installed smcfancontrol and started to monitor the temp of the drive. I also took the mac apart again and sucked out any dust in the fans or vents. The drive never goes over a 105 F, so it doesn't seem to be overheating.
However, this is where the problem is consistent: everytime the iMac goes into sleep mode, it crashes and the iMac is unable to find the hard-drive again. Unless I unplug it completely for 5 minutes or so. Once I unplug it, it finds the drive and operates like a champ.
I think maybe there's an issue powering the drive back on? Anyone have any ideas?
And my follow up posting later that day:
Quote:
So I ran some tests just to see if was an overheat issue, hard drive malfunction, or sleep issue. I decided to start encoding a video, pulled up Word, Power Point, Excel, started downloading all 6000 mail messages off my server (I never delete my e-mail :-/), also started installing iLife 09, and pulled up a bunch of webpages in Firefox with multiple tabs.
However, I shut off all sleep mode options on the hard drive. I let it run for an hour and came back. Everything is fine, hard drive isn't locked up and smcfancontrol shows the hard drive running pretty hot (115 degrees) but not so hot I'm worried. So it's definitely something to do the hard drives going into sleep mode and not powering back on. It's also weird that I have to leave the computer completely unplugged for 10-15 minutes before the drive is recognized again.
So turning off sleep seems to be my work-around, however, this shouldn't be a long term solution. I'm worried that there is a bigger issue with the iMac, but I'm not sure what would cause this. I've been a PC guy for years, this was my first Mac, and honestly I don't know enough about the inner workings to narrow this down. I would assume this would have to do with the motherboard in some way? But I'm not sure how you would even test it.
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Mar 1, 2012
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?
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Sep 7, 2010
I couldn't find anything. I have a mac mini and I am going to do system restore but I was wondering if it was possible to store Microsoft Office on my external hard drive because I don't have the discs anymore.
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Jun 6, 2010
Lately I've been using my external hard drive as the main drive of my imac I5 and every day it freezes when I open 3 or 4 apps or more or while doing several stuff at the same time. This, obviously, doesnt happen when using the internal hard drive of the imac, so I suppose is due to using firewire 800 or usb 2.0. Is it normal for every external hard drive to freeze when using it as the main drive or maybe is it that my external hard drive is bad?
I'm planning on buying a more quieter external hard drive to use as the main drive of my imac, but I wont do so if it also keeps freezing every day. Any suggestions? Is it normal even when using firewire 800? When using the external hard drive I umount the internal drive of the imac. Maybe this is the reason? Its a Lacie Big Disk 500GB. Would an external SSD make a difference or would it still freeze?
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Aug 31, 2010
After replacing the first one due to a surprisingly noisy hard drive, and the replacement itself being returned due to having a massive hardware failure, I'm still not using the iMac I ordered over a month ago. Funny thing is, the second iMac had the same rumbling hard drive as the first which I was prepared to put up with. With no more than a few days of usage, it just stopped working. It's been over a week since the second was returned and the new one hasn't been shipped!
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Sep 21, 2010
My Imac cannot find its hard drive. When I turn it on it shows a folder with a blinking question mark. And even when I go to reinstall the software it can't find a destination. What can I do?
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Nov 22, 2010
I'm curious what people use for external storage on their iMacs. I have a Mac Pro which is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm debating whether to get a new Mac Pro or to get an iMac, which would be a pretty good speed bump from my Mac Pro 1,1. I'd get the ssd drive, and the 2TB harddrive and get aftermarket RAM. But what I like about the Mac Pro is the upgrades you can do. And I like the four hard drive bays, for storage and backup. I've got over 3 TB of photos and music/tv/movies, so I'm going to need an external drive. In addition, I'd like to be able to backup everything. Is there an elegant way to do this on an iMac with an external drive that isn't super loud and hot?
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Dec 31, 2009
my mac has a pioneer dvd drive in it and it wont read my dvd+r dl and I am wanting to burn a mac os 10.5.dmg to it and install 10.5 but the dang thing is ejecting it. So what should I do to get it to work get the external dvd and run it from it or get a external hard drive and try it that way.
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Jul 2, 2009
I don't know if this was covered or not, but I couldn't find anything on it. I have an external hard drive that is formatted to my PC. I want to use it for my Mac but I can't edit, delete, copy files because it's formatted to my PC. Now, is there a way to format it to Mac without taking everything off and putting it back on?
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Nov 4, 2010
Just put a new Hard Drive into my Imac Dual Core. I Know I need to start up from the CD drive to format the disk... I am holding down the "C" key at startup but it isn't reading the drive.
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Nov 15, 2009
It looks like the hard disk in my 1.5 year old iMac (24" 3.06 C2D, running 10.6) suddenly failed today. I woke the mac up from sleep and pretty much immediately I got a spinning beach ball. The system was totally unresponsive so I did a hard reset. Unfortunately the blinking "?" folder came up on the gray screen, instead of the familiar Apple logo. Booted off the OS X disk and ran Disk Utility. The hard disk comes up as "media" and unrecognized by the system. So no First aid or formatting possible. I'm guessing the hard disk has given up but before purchasing a new one I want to rule out anything more serious like motherboard issues.
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Jun 19, 2010
After owning my Imac for about 12 months or more now I've noticed lately that it has become much much slower. I expected it to slow down just like all computers once you have used up a fair bit of memory space but I haven't used up much at all. I've tried to avoid using up too much space on my Mac by using an external storage drive but I'm wondering if that has the opposite effect? I've got the usual apps that help the Mac to run efficiently and I've followed various threads that show how to optimize the mac so I'm assuming there isn't all that much tweaking left to do... could be wrong though. A long time ago (i'm not sure what got into me) but I downloaded the apple developer software, I don't intend on using it but i don't what the correct names of the apps are and I don't want to uninstall the wrong stuff. I have tested the speed of my Mac with and without the external memory drive but didn't find much difference, but perhaps my tests weren't entirely accurate.
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Jul 1, 2012
only the sleep button under the apple logo puts the hard drive to sleep it doesn't do it automatically though energy saver and a timed sleep?
Info:
iMac (27-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Sep 28, 2010
I have 2 WD External Hard Drive Im trying to copy files from one to the other it wont let me because its read only..
If i Reformat the one with the files so i can copy it using my imac would i lose my files in there?
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