(10.1) Hard drive going to sleep when in use

Before zapping the PRAM, try the following: restart without extensions, trash the Energy Saver Preferences, then restart normally and reset your Energy Saver settings.

Previously, H. Chan wrote:

I'm having a problem with the energy saving functions under 10.1...

After my computer (dual-533 G4) is wakened from sleep, the hard drive will occasionally power down even when I'm using the computer (it has a distinctive sound, which is also heard during a normal "begin sleeping" cycle, and just before shutting down/restarting). The system itself is not actually put to sleep.

This occurs roughly 5-10 minutes apart, and can happen even if I'm typing away (the drive powered down twice while writing this, actually). Any demand for disk
activity (save, open folder) will of course re-awaken the drive.

Problems started after I changed the Energy Saver prefs to power down the monitor after a period of idleness. "Separate timing for hard drive sleep" was NOT selected. Turning the monitor sleep back off and setting them to "Never" sleep, did not fix the problem.

Has anyone else encountered similar problems? Would a PRAM reset solve this?

My G3 suffers from the problem and my G4 parks its heads excessively. Only turning off drive sleep entirely prevents it.

Does the drive wake up straight away? I once had a HD that wasn't getting enough power so it would occasionally spin down and up again. My problem was that I'd managed to get a CPU fan, a CD-ROM and a HD on the same power connector.

That was years ago on a PC so it probably doesn't mean anything but the symptoms were the same.

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Previously, H. Chan wrote:

No extensions to speak of (running 10.1), but I could try trashing the Energy prefs... erm... where are they stored under OSX?

Preferences are stored ~/Library/Preferences.

I'd suggest you get your power supply looked at by a professional. If it's under warranty, just take it to an Apple Service Center.

While the delay is small for typing etc. you should see what it does to networked 3d games like quake :)

Also, this frequent restarting of your drive will wear it out and may result in lost data!

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My bad. I stupidly missed that "(10.1)" that you put right there at the beginning of your subject line.

After modifying the Energy settings, I had to restart 10.1 to stop that silly default five minute spindown. My fresh installation of 10.1 has a "com.apple.PowerManagement.plist" file in Library/Preferences that contains energy settings. I have a ".GlobalPreferences.plist" file but no "com.apple.systempreferences.plist" in my OS X Preferences folder.

I have the exact same problem with my Quicksilver 733. It only happened after I installed 10.1. I did a clean install to see if the problem would be fixed that way and it did not work. I even zapped the PRAM, that did not help either.