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Makes sure that a connected drive never goes to sleep. Free
Keep Drive Spinning is an applet that makes sure that a connected drive never goes to sleep (that is, that it never spins down).
Normally this can be controlled using the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences, and that should be your first resort in dealing with the problem, rather than this or any other third party software. However, some external drives (e.g. Western Digital's MyBook drives) do not respect the System Preferences settings, so for them an alternative like this is needed.
This applet simply creates a launch agent that tells OS X to touch a
Normally this can be controlled using the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences, and that should be your first resort in dealing with the problem, rather than this or any other third party software. However, some external drives (e.g. Western Digital's MyBook drives) do not respect the System Preferences settings, so for them an alternative like this is needed.
This applet simply creates a launch agent that tells OS X to touch a
What's New
Version 1.2:
- Now handles drive names that include apostrophes and other troublesome characters.
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Keep Drive Spinnin... User Discussion (Write a Review)
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Keep Drive Spinning is an applet that makes sure that a connected drive never goes to sleep (that is, that it never spins down).
Normally this can be controlled using the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences, and that should be your first resort in dealing with the problem, rather than this or any other third party software. However, some external drives (e.g. Western Digital's MyBook drives) do not respect the System Preferences settings, so for them an alternative like this is needed.
This applet simply creates a launch agent that tells OS X to touch a hidden file on the selected drive once every minute so that the drive stays awake.
Launch agents are built-in OS X technology and persist across reboots, etc., so you can run this once to set-it-and-forget-it. You can find the launch agents made by Keep Drive Spinning in the LaunchAgents folder of your user's Library folder.
Normally this can be controlled using the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences, and that should be your first resort in dealing with the problem, rather than this or any other third party software. However, some external drives (e.g. Western Digital's MyBook drives) do not respect the System Preferences settings, so for them an alternative like this is needed.
This applet simply creates a launch agent that tells OS X to touch a hidden file on the selected drive once every minute so that the drive stays awake.
Launch agents are built-in OS X technology and persist across reboots, etc., so you can run this once to set-it-and-forget-it. You can find the launch agents made by Keep Drive Spinning in the LaunchAgents folder of your user's Library folder.
Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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+1
Harley-Nitro reviewed on 17 Feb 2012
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I have tried this all hours of the day and night and on 2 different iMacs. Any ideas from any one on this site that that never connects. Thanks, Harley-Nitro
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+8
It's exactly what I've done to get it back after returning to OS X recently.
I tried what you suggested and the finder froze and never created the app. Now I can't use my external Seagate Drives at all. If I plug in the drive, after 3 mins they freeze the finder. Do you know of a way to correct the problem?
1) The download link has been fixed now, so you can use that.
2) All Keep Drive Spinning does is create a LaunchAgent in your user's Library folder. If you are having trouble with your drives after running the script, you can delete the LaunchAgent simply by running the script again and clicking the "Let a drive sleep..." button. If you are still having problems after doing this, you will need to look elsewhere for the cause, because all trace of Keep Drive Spinning's work will already have been removed from your system.
+8
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Macnerd1984 reviewed on 17 Feb 2012
Sundown7 reviewed on 16 Feb 2012
Your download links are not working from anywhere including:
http://web.me.com/jonstovell/personal/Software.html
If you see this, could you please let us know if you intend to continue distributing this cool little app.
+17
efferon reviewed on 23 Jan 2012
I didn't feel like changing the applescript to allow the applet to handle apostrophe's
Mike In Kansas reviewed on 16 Sep 2011
+8
Allannyholm reviewed on 11 Sep 2011
I am however seeing an issue with the spinning down of my LaCie d2 Quadra 500Gb edition;
I'm having to launch Keep Drive Spinning for each boot of OS X Lion because apparently OS X forgets the settings for the LaCie drive which is being used for Time Machine. When my mac is idle and should be sleeping after a while, the drive continues to be alive and sounds like it's trying to enter sleep mode with the MacBook Pro(Early 2011) that I have. the MBP's screen is black and the external drive wakes up and idles again many many times, without waking my display but keeping it blackened.
I probably should look to see if the launchagent is present on my drive.
So, a little help or an explanation for this issue? Which btw isn't a problem, rather something I'm noticing.
I think I know that Keep Drive Spinning prevents the Mac from sleeping entirely because of the pulling on the external drive?
I can't provide anything more than a guess as to what your particular issue is. Did your drive come with some sort of software for you to install, and if so did you install it? If so, perhaps that software is trying to do something to the drive that is causing the behaviour you see.
+8
I'll investigate further. For now I manually sleep my machine by closing the lid. That works just fine.
You've made a excellent guess, but I've never installed the software for any LaCie drive - I did once with my WD MyBook - never this one.
I've also realized that I do have a LaunchAgent for the LaCie drive present over reboots.
Thank you for your reply.
+1
+1
MacSeoGuy reviewed on 24 Aug 2011
I have a Mac Mini with a SSD internal drive and an external WD drive. Every time I would do just about anything that involved the finder, the WD drive would have to come up to speed negating a major reason for having the SSD in the mix.
This is probably something you should offer in the app store.
Thanks again,
_Matt
Rigo5421 reviewed on 12 Mar 2011
I download the KeepDriveSpinning.zip file, unzip it - and all I get unzipped is the Keep Drive Spinning.icns file.
What am I missing here? Do I need to put the file somewhere?
Feeling a little dumb, but have tried it on two macs with the same result. Both running Snow Leopard
I hate to promote one of MacUpdate's competitors, but until they get the file fixed, you can get it from Mac Softpedia. I was able to download it there and it worked fine:
http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Keep-Drive-Spinning-Download-55147.html
+113
Eggi_from_Hamburg rated on 15 Apr 2012