Time Machine and LaCie Little Big Disk?

irelandireland
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Just ordered my Leopard iMac, and a LaCie Little Big Disk. I am one of those folks who dislikes cables, not with a passion or anything, I just dislike them. So goes without saying it was only a matter of time before I anted up to a bus-powered external hard drive.



Does the LaCie Little Big Disk have an on off switch, and will the disk mount and turn on (automatically) every time I power on my Mac with the LaCie attached?



In an ideal situation I will set Time Machine to make Back-ups every night or two at a certain time, it would be 'so' sweet if Time Machine and OS X was clever enough to be able to somehow turn on the external hard disk 'only' while making back-ups.



I back up a lot, but I have no experience with bus-powered external drives, the LaCie Little Big Disk, or Time Machine.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,433moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    Does the LaCie Little Big Disk have an on off switch, and will the disk mount and turn on (automatically) every time I power on my Mac with the LaCie attached?



    I have a bus powered drive (not that one) and it has no on/off switch. The pictures of the LBD show no power switch on the back so it looks to be the same. Mine (seagate) is quite annoying because it doesn't spin down on ejecting until after about 10 seconds. I have a Lacie external that spins down immediately though so hopefully it's like that one.



    That LBD disk looks very impressive, especially the speed it gets because of the RAID setup with two drives inside. It's a little unfortunate that the power consumption means it's only bus powered for firewire not USB but HDs are better run on FW anyway.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    In an ideal situation I will set Time Machine to make Back-ups every night or two at a certain time, it would be 'so' sweet if Time Machine and OS X was clever enough to be able to somehow turn on the external hard disk 'only' while making back-ups.



    A simple script ought to do it. Just set a script to run at a certain time, then it would mount the drive, start Time machine, quit Time Machine to prevent disk in use problems, then unmount the drive again.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin


    A simple script ought to do it. Just set a script to run at a certain time, then it would mount the drive, start Time machine, quit Time Machine to prevent disk in use problems, then unmount the drive again.



    I have made a few Automator scripts during my Mac use, but I'm not sure if I could manage that one.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Marvin, will the drive try to start up and mount every time I boot my machine?
  • Reply 4 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,433moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    I have made a few Automator scripts during my Mac use, but I'm not sure if I could manage that one.



    I'm sure someone will be willing to write one for you when they get Leopard and know what the syntax is for calling Time Machine's backup feature. I don't know if it would even need automator - ical + applescript should do it.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland


    Marvin, will the drive try to start up and mount every time I boot my machine?



    Yes, the system automounts connected drives at startup. Again you can get a script to unmount it after booting by putting it in your startup items.



    You can prevent it mounting them in the first place by modifying the /etc/rc file



    The part that says:



    echo "Mounting local filesystems"

    mount -uw /

    [ -f /etc/fstab ] && mount -vat nonfs



    the part -f /etc/fstab I believe mounts external filesystems. -uw / mounts your root drive.



    So changing it to:



    echo "Mounting local filesystems"

    mount -uw / && mount -vat nonfs



    might work. To change the file, use sudo open /Applications/Textedit/Contents/MacOS/textedit /etc/rc.



    If you screw it up you can always use Time Machine to put it back.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    datamodeldatamodel Posts: 126member
    Won't the Energy Saver do what you want? Set it to power down HDD's and the drive will mount then power down, and just power up for backups when it's being written to...



    The drive will start up and mount every time the machine boots if it's attached.



    Not sure if that helps, but hopefully...



    Cheers,



    Martin.
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