Knunchucksammy
I am using an external to DJ off of for my business and it always goes to sleep halfway through a song, and then I have to wait for it to wake up again for the next song to load which can sometimes cause dead-air. Is there any software out there that will allow me to tell the hard drive to NOT go to sleep? Or at least extend how long until it does?
When I say sleep, I mean it stops spinning and when you ask it to do a task it has to spin back up and this can take 5 to 15 seconds sometimes.
Matt
When I say sleep, I mean it stops spinning and when you ask it to do a task it has to spin back up and this can take 5 to 15 seconds sometimes.
Matt
Inviato Mon 11 Feb 08 @ 7:17 pm
sbangs
Some hardrive have an anoying saftey feature which stops the drive spining if its not being read , to cut down ware on the drive.
As your audio will be loaded into ram as much as possible, the drive can not be read.
It is possible to create fake trafic to keep the disk alive using the following article.
"There has been reported problems with second hard drives (e.g. Maxtor) that repeatedly spin down and then freeze the system for >5 - 6 seconds before they come back to life. This is very annoying. However, it is easy to work around this by creating a "cron job". This will keep your drive up and alive (i.e.no sleep).
If you'd like to learn how to use 'cron' to keep your second drive occupied and awake, read the rest of this article.
You must follow the easy steps below in the Terminal as ordinary user (not as root):
create a plain text file with the name "Activate" on your second hard disk (with me it is called "Work" in the directory "Documents"; i.e. /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate) with the contents:
#!/bin/shcd /ls -la > /dev/null
The last line should be an enter. Change its rights to executable with
chmod ugo+x Activate
This shell script does basically nothing important except run quickly.
create a plain text file in your ~/Documents directory with the name "spin" and with the contents:
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>[space]sh /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate<enter>
(This all should be on one line; it's shown here on two for the sake of narrowness! Of course you should use the tab-key and the enter-key on the indicated <tab> and <enter> places. Please replace "Work" and "Documents" with the names of the directories where you've put the "Activate" file! N.B. there is a space between "sh" and "/Volumes....!!") This "spin" file should be readable for all (chmod ugo+r). It is the material to be read by the crontab and it means basically: run every five minutes the shell script "Activate"
create a plain textfile in your home directory ~ with name ".login" (or add lines to an already existing .login file) and enter the following lines (end with an <enter>!):
alias cronoff crontab -ralias spinoff crontab ~/Documents/spin
Logout of the Terminal and login again (Cmd-"N"). Now by typing "spinoff" you create a cron job that will keep your second hard drive alive by executing a small unimportant script every five minutes. You can kill this cron job with the command "cronoff" (followed by "y"). This could be useful if you want to save your disk life (and energy bills) when keeping the computer powered on while you are away. The drive then will spin down and sleep as was usual before. You can view the actual context of your crontab with the command "crontab -l". You can also kill it manually by "crontab -r".
"
Source : http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20011024160033481
As your audio will be loaded into ram as much as possible, the drive can not be read.
It is possible to create fake trafic to keep the disk alive using the following article.
"There has been reported problems with second hard drives (e.g. Maxtor) that repeatedly spin down and then freeze the system for >5 - 6 seconds before they come back to life. This is very annoying. However, it is easy to work around this by creating a "cron job". This will keep your drive up and alive (i.e.no sleep).
If you'd like to learn how to use 'cron' to keep your second drive occupied and awake, read the rest of this article.
You must follow the easy steps below in the Terminal as ordinary user (not as root):
create a plain text file with the name "Activate" on your second hard disk (with me it is called "Work" in the directory "Documents"; i.e. /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate) with the contents:
#!/bin/shcd /ls -la > /dev/null
The last line should be an enter. Change its rights to executable with
chmod ugo+x Activate
This shell script does basically nothing important except run quickly.
create a plain text file in your ~/Documents directory with the name "spin" and with the contents:
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>[space]sh /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate<enter>
(This all should be on one line; it's shown here on two for the sake of narrowness! Of course you should use the tab-key and the enter-key on the indicated <tab> and <enter> places. Please replace "Work" and "Documents" with the names of the directories where you've put the "Activate" file! N.B. there is a space between "sh" and "/Volumes....!!") This "spin" file should be readable for all (chmod ugo+r). It is the material to be read by the crontab and it means basically: run every five minutes the shell script "Activate"
create a plain textfile in your home directory ~ with name ".login" (or add lines to an already existing .login file) and enter the following lines (end with an <enter>!):
alias cronoff crontab -ralias spinoff crontab ~/Documents/spin
Logout of the Terminal and login again (Cmd-"N"). Now by typing "spinoff" you create a cron job that will keep your second hard drive alive by executing a small unimportant script every five minutes. You can kill this cron job with the command "cronoff" (followed by "y"). This could be useful if you want to save your disk life (and energy bills) when keeping the computer powered on while you are away. The drive then will spin down and sleep as was usual before. You can view the actual context of your crontab with the command "crontab -l". You can also kill it manually by "crontab -r".
"
Source : http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20011024160033481
Inviato Tue 12 Feb 08 @ 4:41 am