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Spinning down External HD when not in use?

I have an external drive with 2 partitions; one for SuperDuper, and one for time machine. I have used AppleScript to automatically mount this External when SuperDuper is scheduled to clone; then automatically dismount the HD when SuperDuper completes the clone. This automation comes in handy being that I don't have to interact with the software at all for daily backups. Now, the problem is that the HD is constantly plugged via my powered USB Hub all day-everyday, so the HD is constantly spinning. Is there any software available that I can use to spin down the drive when it's idle for a while then spin up when SuperDuper mounts it?? Google has yielded no results. ;o/

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What operating system are you using? What model is your external HD? Also it seems to me if your external HD doesn't have an external power source you may be able to write a script or find a program to shut down the usb port when not needed. The same end result would be accomplished.

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Good Idea!! Im running Snow 10.6.6. I have a HitachiHD that came with my Mac in a generic enclosure. It's a USB enclosure and I do have it connected to a powered USB hub being that I noticed significant transfer speed increase this way compared to the Mac's native USB ports.

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It's asleep. AS long as I kepp the internal HD busy it won't snooze, so this is as good as it gets.

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There are lots of little scripts to do that once every five minutes, need one?

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Sure; fire away.

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Try going to the General settings on SuperDuper and change the "On successful completion" option to Sleep Computer.

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I think the idea here is to put the drive to sleep, not the computer.

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ABCellars is right Rich. I want to spin down the drive; not the whole machine. Although the drive automatically unmounts it still spins constantly.

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I don't know if this will work on an external USB powered drive but you might check Energy Saver in the System Preferences and check the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible". Is there a reason you don't use Time Machine to just back up your changes for that day? It seems like a lot of hard work to completely clone the drive everyday for such small changes.

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That Energy Star preference pane is only for internal drives. Well, I use smart update which only backs up any recent changes since the last clone. It doesn't completely clone the drive every time. It works almost like Time Machine. I don't like Time Machine backups. They are storage hogs and failed me twice when trying to restore the data to a fresh OS install. Tons of error messages.

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Found it. CHUD Tools - Apple Developer stuff: http://lowendmac.com/musings/06/0217.htm...

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