[X4U] Seagate External Drives Info

[Philip J Robar]

On Jun 16, 2006, at 9:09 AM, revDAVE wrote:

> It looks like ALL SEAGATE EXTERNAL DRIVES over 200 gig have a  
> permanent
> feature of sleep mode every 5 to 10 minutes - and therefore are a  
> bad idea
> on a Mac because they make the Mac wait about 10 seconds every 5-10  
> minutes
> while they wake from sleep (assuming you're not using it) - and  
> there is NO
> WAY to fix this...!!!
>
> BTW: ( Seagate internals are fine)

I supposed it's not inconceivable that Seagate external drives have  
different firmware than the same drive when sold as an internal  
drive. And since you'd probably have to open the case (thereby  
voiding your warranty) and install the drive in a PC to use the  
Seagate setup software it's probably more trouble than most people  
are willing to go through to deal with this - even if the firmware  
would let you.

One work around would be to have cron run a shell script that simply  
touches a file on the external drive every few minutes. The web is  
loaded with articles on OS X and the cron facility. CronniX is a free  
GUI wrapper for cron.  Use it to create a job like the following:

*/4 * * * * /usr/bin/touch /Volumes/"Your HD name here"/.keepAlive

This would access the disk every 4 minutes. Change the 4 to the  
interval of your choice.

I'm curious as to why you think this is a problem for Macs as opposed  
to any other computer.


Phil