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I upgraded my Macbook's internal hard drive from a 400GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue to a 750GB Scorpio Blue and restored from Time Machine. Despite my energy saver settings, the new drive shuts down after only 15 seconds of inactivity! Then, when I try to do anything, I get greeted with the beach ball while the drive spins up. If I play a song (with the sound off), the HD never spins down; I have been doing this to prevent beach balls. The drive spins down within 10 seconds of stopping the song.

Here are the results of pmset:

~$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 womp       0
 lidwake    1
 halfdim    1
 sms        1
 hibernatefile  /var/vm/sleepimage
 disksleep  0
 sleep      45
 hibernatemode  3
 ttyskeepawake  1
 displaysleep   10
 acwake     0
 autorestart    0

And, SpindownHD shows that the drive is always active, even though I can hear it shut down. Is this a bad disk? Is there something else I can try? Sorta related, is there a way to monitor hard drive RPM?


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2 Answers 2

up vote 0 down vote accepted

You might try using hdapm to make the drive less aggressive about spinning down.

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Sometimes, there are separate profiles for battery and adaptor power. Check if both profiles are set to never stop harddrive from spinning.

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Yup, both profiles are. –  Lou Z. Aug 26 '10 at 3:27

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