Why does OS X insist on spinning up all external drives when loading a file from the local drive?

Posted by Phillip Oldham on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Phillip Oldham
Published on 2010-03-01T15:27:12Z Indexed on 2010/03/24 14:03 UTC
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mac

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osx

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snow-leopard

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disk

Why does OS X insist on spinning up all the attached external drives (firewire, usb) when loading a file from the local (internal) drive?

It's driving me insane that I have to wait for 3 attached drives (1 back-up, 2 media) to spin up -- a total of 20s -- to access a file that is located only on my local/internal drive. There is no obvious need to access the other drives; nothing is being read from them and nothing need be written.

Examples: Quicktime X opening a file from the local HDD. Starting Caffeine, an app which doesn't access any other files at all.

Can I tell OS X to only spin those drives up when actually accessing them?

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