FireWire sleep problems under Mac OS X 10.2.3: Further testing; solutions
FireWire sleep problems under Mac OS X 10.2.3: Further testing; solutions
After yesterday's initial report regarding a problem that causes FireWire hard drives - particularly those using the Oxford 911 chip set - to go to sleep after 15 minutes, often resulting in an unmounting of the volume.
Additional testing David Conkey did some additional testing of the problem, comparing drives with Oxford 911 chip sets to those using the LSI configuration:
"Drives which contained the Oxford 911 chip set, and drives which contained the Indigita 911 chip set always displayed the sleep problem. Firewire Hard Drives using these specific firewire chip sets would spindown completely, and go to sleep after 15 minutes if the drive was hotplugged and then left 'idle.'
"But when we tested Firewire Hard Drives which contained the older style (pre-Oxford 911) firewire chip set, called the LSI Firewire chip set, none of those types of drives went to sleep. From our test results the LSI Firewire chip set seems to be completely unaffected by the sleep issue, and the drives just keep on trucking."
The "pmset" command The Terminal command "pmset" ("modify power management settings") can alleviate the FireWire sleep issue for users who are comfortable using UNIX commands. The "pmset" command allows you to set the spindown time for external devices. For instructions on how to use pmset, type "man pmset." The command must be used when logged in as the root user.
Spindown fix 1.1 For those who would rather simply download an AppleScript, MacMaps software offers Spindownfix, a utility designed to tell the computer - if the Energy Saver is off - not to spindown non-boot volumes.
The tool was originally released as a solution for a problem doing video capture in Mac OS X, as frames get dropped if the hard drive is not spinning when files are written to it.
More information on the small script is available from http://www.macmaps.com/software.html.
The freeware utility Xsleep has also been reported as a solution.Resources