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Guitarfreak 30 June 2010

I know this should probably be an inquiry to the company and not a recording forum, but you guys are the pros and I want pro opinions, not a product recommendation.

My external drive is a Western Digital 7200 RPM 500GB drive and it's great, I really have no complaints. The recording speed seems to be fine, it can go up to 96k as long as my computer is performing that fast. The only thing that I don't like is that it seems to go into sleep mode if I don't touch it for ten or more minutes. Then, when I need to access the HD or something on it (say a folder or the music in my iTunes library) I need to wait a few seconds while it boots up and my computer freezes temporarily until it finishes its boot up process. It's just an unnecessary annoyance that builds frustration from running into it so frequently.

I have thought about getting a new HD and/or trying to disable the sleep feature on this one, but I've always talked myself out of it because the feature is most likely a good one and disabling it would be detrimental to the drive. I know all drives can't be like this though, should I get a different make or model when I upgrade? I am running out of space on this one so I need an upgrade soon. I was thinking of getting a FireWire drive because this one is USB and transfer times would be faster and I'd get better throughput. I use reamping so throughput is good.

What are your thoughts?

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Comments

soapfloats Thu, 07/01/2010 - 22:58

If you upgrade:
I love my [[url=http://[/URL]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]Glyph 050Q[/]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]Glyph 050Q[/] 1TB external HD.
Wish I had 2 or 3 of them, as a matter of fact.

Think I got mine for around $230.
eSATA, FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 connectivity... very fast, very stable

So long as you turn it off when not in use, you shouldn't have to worry about the wear and tear that your sleep mode is trying to reduce.

Guitarfreak Mon, 07/05/2010 - 07:46

I'm heading out the door right now, so I apologize for a quick response, but I appreciate the responses. I browsed quickly through System Prefs and didn't find any way to control the external drive's sleep function. I've got sleep disabled for the onboard drive, but I don't see a comparable option for the external. I'll definitely keep those Glyph drives on the map for when I upgrade, thanks.

Guitarfreak Tue, 07/06/2010 - 06:52

ericzang, post: 351148 wrote: Years ago I had WD drive that had that annoying "feature". Somewhere on the web I found a short little .bat file (PC) that would write a tiny little file every 5 minutes or so which would then always keep the drive awake.

hah, that's neat. I'll have to see if I can find one for mac. Thanks, feel better that I'm not the only one annoyed by it.

djmukilteo Sat, 07/10/2010 - 17:35

There might also be a USB hub power management scheme that you should turn off or disable. Windows has this and if your external drive is USB then that might where it's getting turned off. Not sure if Mac's have that but I'm sure they have something like it!

In Windows this is in the Control Panel/System/Hardware/USB/properties.
There is a "Power Management" tab in properties for each of your USB hubs.

soapfloats Sat, 07/10/2010 - 23:04

Guitarfreak, post: 351328 wrote: For the Glyph drive, you said to turn it off when not in use. Is it acceptable to just turn it off while I sleep?

Turn it off whenever you're not going to be needing it for an extended period of time. I understand the annoyances while doing different things on the computer, but if you're not going to use it for a few hours, just turn it off and deal w/ the one-time boot-up.

But, as John mentioned, it may be your OS doing this, in which case the Glyph won't be any different.
They are nice external drives, though.

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