external HDD spin down/up

randomlinh

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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linh.wordpress.com
I have my system set to spin down the HDD's whenever possible. My external drives get very little use, so it's pointless to have them spinning all the time. However, it seems randomly, they will spin up. Anyone know what would be doing it?

I suspect it has something to do w/ spotlight, but no idea. It kicks up when a save/open dialog box comes up too... I understand that one, but annoying nevertheless.

On a related note, does anyone know if you can explicitly do this for ONLY the external drives? I'm guessing no... but thought I'd ask.

 

Batti

Golden Member
Feb 2, 2000
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I think that Spotlight is indexing the drive, waking it up. You can add the external disk to Spotlight's privacy list to stop the indexing.
 

randomlinh

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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linh.wordpress.com
Originally posted by: Batti
I think that Spotlight is indexing the drive, waking it up. You can add the external disk to Spotlight's privacy list to stop the indexing.

that's what I was afraid of. Ideally, I'd like spotlight to index it when there's a change... because I don't want to lose that ability. It is quite handy.