[G4] Sleep, Different Kinds

[Brian Silverio]

John,
my firewire drive spins down.  However it will only spin down under 
command from the system.
It will sometimes be spinning when the system is powered off.
I do not have any other way to stop it other than pulling the plug.
So to keep it from running all the time I disconnect it.
My drive does not have an on/off switch.

I also don't use it very often.  It is a quick and easy way to transfer 
large amounts of data between my laptop and desktop.  I could boot one 
of them in firewire target mode but this avoids the need to reboot.

Brian


On Feb 11, 2004, at 5:56 PM, John Collins wrote:

> Brian and Shaene-- your info is useful. Do you know how this applies 
> to external FW drives. Do they spin down as well as the internal 
> drives? I have several external FW devices that I use on an occasional 
> basis--how is the best way to handle them.
>
> Brian-- I notice in a later post-- you evidently disconnect yours. I 
> would find this inconvenient but I could do it if that seems to be the 
> best way. I use mine primarily for archiving and backup purposes (on a 
> manual basis not with software).
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> John in Tucson
> On Feb 10, 2004, at 8:23 PM, Brian Silverio wrote:
>
>> Anne,
>> "Use separate time to put display to sleep" just turns your monitor 
>> off.  If you are running a download or or backup they will continue 
>> to run.  Move the mouse or press a key and the monitor turns back on.
>>
>> "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" will cause your hard 
>> drive(s) to spin down if they are not accessed in some (unknown to 
>> me) time period.  I have five drives and find that my boot drive 
>> rarely spins down.  The others often do.  Then when I do something 
>> that uses the "sleeping" drive I have to wait for it to spin up to 
>> speed.  Again downloads and backups will continue to run w/o problem.
>>
>> "Put computer to sleep when it is inactive for x minutes" is another 
>> story.  My understanding of "inactive" is that a human has not 
>> touched a key or moved the mouse in x minutes.  when this happens 
>> your downloads will stop, also any other process that is running will 
>> stop.  Things will resume when you wake the machine up.  Your 
>> download will have to be restarted.  I would think twice about 
>> trusting a backup that had a system sleep happen in the middle.  
>> Unless you had verified the backup.
>>
>> I hope this helps
>>
>> Brian
>
>
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