Hard drive behaviour when connected to Mac OS X (El Capitan)

[Dave2002]

If I have a disk drive connected to my MBP - currently working with El Capitan - the drive sometimes comes to life even if I'm not using it. I am not talking about drives which are used for Time Machine, which will be activated periodically. Surely drives should only be accessed/powered up if the user activates a transfer to or from such drives.

Does anyone here understand this? is this intentional, a fault, a bug or something else?

[Lordgeous]

I believe all drives update their directories regularily. I have 4 external drives connected to my MacPro and I hear occasional activity noise from time to time

[Dave2002]

Thanks for that. I noticed that my Seagate 3 Tbyte drive fired up for less than 5 seconds earlier today - though that is one which is used for TM - but there wasn't a backup actually scheduled for that time. When TM is backing up the drive is active for much longer.

I have another drive which supposedly has energy saver software to put the drives to sleep, but that doesn't work. I did notice that there is a setting in System Preferences -> Energy Saver (El Capitan, anyway) to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". By itself this doesn't do the whole job. It seems that it is not completely independent of other activity (CPU etc.), but if "Computer sleep" is set to 3-5 minutes, or a suitably small value, there's a reasonable chance it will work. If the sleep time is set for an hour or more - which might make sense sometimes if there is a need for intensive activity - then I surmise that the drives very probably won't shut off in a hurry.

[Lordgeous]

My computer friends have always advised me to leave drives running. Not sure why but I belive it puts more stress on them starting and stopping rather than continual running. I could be wrong! I can see that one might want to save battery in a laptop, but not in a mainframe.

[Dave2002]

My computer friends have always advised me to leave drives running. Not sure why but I belive it puts more stress on them starting and stopping rather than continual running. I could be wrong! I can see that one might want to save battery in a laptop, but not in a mainframe.

I don't really believe that, but it may avoid some problems due to drives not being mounted/unmounted properly. Most drives in equipment which is working properly are probably not running all the while anyway, but only when really needed, in which case there is probably no major harm in leaving them on. However, it is clear that some drives do run when they don't need to - probably due to poor software design, so if ways can be found to turn them off safely when not needed that makes sense to me. In systems which have a requirement for rapid response (real time systems etc.) then it may be sensible to leave them on - though nowadays such critical systems would probably be allocated to SSD based systems. Also, some drives are hybrids, with some SSD memory (e.g Fusion drives) so the rotating disk won't spin up unless really necessary. Having drives which actually do rotate continuously will probably cause more heat than really necessary, and use more electricity which is arguably not a good thing.

[MrGongGong]

Dave, since you seem to have constant computer problems
would you like to buy my Arari 1040 ST ?
Best computer i've ever had
no hard drive so no problems there
Operating system on floppy disc
STILL working

unlike all the other Sony, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Apple etc ones I've had since

Shame I don't have the Spectrum as well

[MrGongGong]

Should have read Atari

BUT no matter how many times I try I can't edit anything on this ridiculous sodding forum software

AAAARGH

[french frank]

BUT no matter how many times I try I can't edit anything on this ridiculous sodding forum software

AAAARGH

I'm really trying to get to the bottom of this, Gongers. I've logged out, logged in again with my 'Full Member' account, posted down in the basement, edited the post. No problem. Where exactly is the problem arising?

[MrGongGong]

I'm really trying to get to the bottom of this, Gongers. I've logged out, logged in again with my 'Full Member' account, posted down in the basement, edited the post. No problem. Where exactly is the problem arising?

I click on EDIT POST
make a change
then click on SAVE
nothing happens
nothing happens on Safari, Firefox, Chrome
nothing happens on Snow Leopard, Yosemite, Mavericks

Even after a total reinstall on one of my computers

[french frank]

Mystery. I checked the Control Panel and all boards are set at YES to edit own posts and delete own posts.

I click on EDIT POST
make a change
then click on SAVE
nothing happens
nothing happens on Safari, Firefox, Chrome
nothing happens on Snow Leopard, Yosemite, Mavericks

Even after a total reinstall on one of my computers

[MrGongGong]

Mystery. I checked the Control Panel and all boards are set at YES to edit own posts and delete own posts.

I think we have been here before
New account ?

[french frank]

I think we have been here before
New account ?

It might be worth opening a second account and seeing if the fault is there too. I've been looking on the vBulletin forum and can only see edit problems with the entire forum (i.e. everyone) not just a single member. I suppose that might happen if your editing had been disabled, but it hasn't.

Alternatively, I could log on as you and see if I have the same problem - but would need to overwrite your password (then you could change it back).

[french frank]

I think we have been here before
New account ?

Just thought: if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, under Posting Permissions, does it say 'You may edit your posts'?

[MrGongGong]

Just thought: if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, under Posting Permissions, does it say 'You may edit your posts'?

I get all of these

You may post new threads
You may post replies
You may post attachments
You may edit your posts

[french frank]

I get all of these

That's what the Control Panel confirms.