HD does not sleep because of activity

D

dichimac

Registered
In my macbook pro (Snow Leopard) there is an intermittent writing activity which doesn't let the hard disk go to sleep, even when idle with no apps, internet connection, or anything else open: I tried to see what's happening with sudo fs_usage, and I found out that past every 30 seconds the same series of processes is repeated; here is a single instance:
20:41:08.188 WrData D=0x00007c39 B=0xa000 /dev/disk0s2 0.033631 W launchd
20:41:08.215 IOCTL <DKIOCSYNCHRONIZECACHE> /dev/disk0s2 0.027190 W launchd
20:41:08.216 WrData D=0x00004a88 B=0x200 /dev/disk0s2 0.000699 W launchd
20:41:08.216 sync 0.316780 W launchd
20:41:08.216 select S=1 30.316916 W KernelEventAgent
20:41:08.217 sendto F=4 B=0x1 0.000015 KernelEventAgent
20:41:08.217 getfsstat64 0.000004 fseventsd
20:41:08.217 getfsstat64 0.000011 fseventsd
20:41:08.217 select S=1 0.000168 W KernelEventAgent
20:41:08.217 recvfrom F=5 B=0x1 0.000008 KernelEventAgent
20:41:08.217 WrMeta[async] D=0x0047e298 B=0x2000 /dev/disk0s2 0.000847 W launchd
A fresh install of Snow Leopard didn't change this behavior.

Is there a way I can avoid this to happen and get my hard drive to sleep?
PS I did check the option "put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible".

Macbook Pro, 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM 320GB HD
 
Satcomer said:
Is this drive a Western digital backup drives? I ask because of the "sync" function.
Click to expand...
I checked and the hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 320 GB (model #: ST9320423ASG). I don't have any backup drive.

PS Sorry for the very late reply, but I found out about your post by looking once again for a solution to the problem on Google (I expected to receive an email whenever there was a reply to my message, but this forum doesn't seem to work that way). ;-)
 
Does this drive have an automatic backup program?

The lauchd program is something running on the drive that is accessing data ; Th launchd is the underlining start program kind of like cron jobs in unix.
 
Satcomer said:
Does this drive have an automatic backup program?

The lauchd program is something running on the drive that is accessing data ; Th launchd is the underlining start program kind of like cron jobs in unix.
Click to expand...
The only sorts of backup program I know of is the journaling function: I tried to disable the journaling using Onyx, but that didn't change the periodical HD activity. I should add that if I boot in safe mode (maybe the name is different in Mac OS X) the periodical write in on the hard drive doesn't happen. Also, this phenomenon was there right after the fresh installation of SL, before installing any additional application. Taking also into account that I didn't change any hardware, I might guess that no Macbook Pro of late 2009 gets the HD to ever sleep.
 
I didn't make any progress, so I basically gave up, but if you do get a solution, I would be happy to know about it as well!
 
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