Hard disk wakes!

O

OnEmAnArMy

Junior Member
Hello
in my MBP with lion i have an SSD and a rotational HD.
To save battery i've set the HD to spin down after 3 mins of inactivity. I use to UNMOUNT the rotational hd when i dont need it. In this way it went down after 3 mins being unmounted.

Since i've upgraded to PD7, it happens that every 5 mins after boot up, the hard disk spins up even if it's unmounted...and this is not good at all (both for hd both for battery life).

I've cheched and erased all daemons running and it seems it's parallels daemon.

What to do ?

Thanks
 
Yeah, I just discovered this problem on my machine too, after upgrading from PD6 to version 7.
I've got a second hard drive in my macbook, that just never gets sleep now (unless I set a disksleep timeout to 1 minute or so). That is very annoying as I rarely access this second drive (all the system stuff, or parallels virtual machines are on my main ssd drive), and now this drive is making constant noise, also "eating" my battery.
From what I discovered (using opensnoop tool), that prl_disp_service is responsible for this behavior. Basically it's accessing /dev/disk0 (my ssd) and /dev/disk1 (hd drive) every 2-3 minutes (haven't measured it accurately), which effectively causes disksleep timer reset (and it also means, that it is accessing even unmounted drives). After disabling prl_disp_service (by executing: sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon.plist ) the drives spins down "normally". I've looked through Parallels preferences to see, if there are any setting regarding disk monitoring (or something), that could be disabled, but I don't see anything that could be related to this.
This was not happening with PD6 (or maybe it was, but atleast with much less frequency, as my mackbook was mostly quiet - now the second drive is spinning constantly).


cheers,
B. ;)
 
prl_disp_service prevent disks from sleeping / spin down

I've observed the same behavior....even if I do not have an active virtual machine, the prl_disp_service process scans all hard drives every 5 minutes....even if these drives are in no way connected to any active or inactive VMs. This prevents my disks from sleeping, which increases my system noise and heat generation.

If there is an admin monitoring the boards, I'd love to understand if there are any plan to resolve this issue - why monitor drives that have nothing to do with my Parallels config? If not necessary in PD6, why PD7? I hope this can be resolved (or made configurable) in a future update.
 
I hope they're gonna fix this, cuz it's a really annoing issue that could shorten the hard disk life...
Please, Parallels fix it :)
 
Having the same issue, and it's pretty irritating. I don't see any reason why my HDs should be spinning up when they have nothing to do with my VM install and especially when no VM is even active. Any solutions yet?
 
The fastest way to shorten the life of an hard disk is indeed to have it constantly spin down and up, since it's the spin up that stresses the mechanical components the most, besides the problem with the Parallels daemon making the HD spin up, I think it's very unwise to set hard drive spin down to anything less than 15 of inactivity. Even without Parallels, 3 minutes will result in frequent spin ups.

Hard drives are made to be running, you don't shorten your HD life by having it constantly running during the day, you do so by spinning it up several times per day.
 
No fix yet??

This is a really annoying problem, which I have recently confirmed is present only when PD7 is runnng, and I wish it could be fixed. My second internal HD in my Mac Pro spins up every 10 minutes when PD7 is running. Doesn't mount it, just spins it up. Parallels has no business with this second drive and I wish it would just leave it alone.

The noise level of the second drive is what bothers me even more than the unnecessary power consumption. And I have no intention of trying other work-arounds, like putting the drive in an external enclosure and hiding it under a pillow. Parallels needs to be fixed, and I hope someone at the organization will do something about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top