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  #1  
Old 06-16-2007, 11:58 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Sleep wonky?

I think SD in general good and stable.

I've twice had the experience of setting the Sleep option and can't figure out how to wake it up (am posting from my boyfriend's XP box).

Have been reading blog entries about Sleep on the Mac. Is the sleep used by SuperDuper the Mac-style 'trickle-sleep' or the (according to the blog) Windows-Hibernate-style slightly hacky thing?

System: Mac mini G4

Can now see the light come on on the external firewire backup disc when I try to wake that up (it has a touch power switch, I brush my finger over it to wake it up), but my normal approach of hit the shift key to wake it up, or move the mouse, isn't having any effect.

Is there anything likely to work short of the power-switch reboot option on the Mac, which I don't really like doing?
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  #2  
Old 06-17-2007, 12:49 PM
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We just ask the system to sleep -- the same as picking "Sleep" from the menu.
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  #3  
Old 06-17-2007, 01:18 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dnanian View Post
We just ask the system to sleep -- the same as picking "Sleep" from the menu.
So it's the more Mac-like one that should work? I wonder if the problem I'm having is related to the FW external's power-button doing tricky things by being touch-sensitive -- if it expects to be awoken from sleep by a Windows machine, maybe it doesn't work as well under a different OS? To be honest, I think the problems I've been having are to do with the external hard drive's implementation of 'sleep', because once or twice before I used SuperDuper the Mac wouldn't awaken from sleep when I tried to use the power button after it being off overnight (Have contacted Seagate's support about this, but they show no interest in replying).

Damn. Had to physically swap out the screw-in adaptor in the bottom to change USB/eSata to Firewire -- in order to access the Seagate Tools to see if I can look at or change the sleep settings, I 'd need to a) take out FW and screw in the USB adaptor, b) carry the drive and its power brick across the room to Teh Evil XP box (which was my old computer before I switched), go back to my Mac and access the XP box from there using Remote Desktop (because the XP box isn't set up for sitting-at-it-access) and cross my fingers to hope that Seagate Tools will access the low-level features on a disk that's The Wrong Format. Huh. Am I losing the will to live here?

Has anybody out there got a Seagate that they could check with? Could anybody tell me if the Seagate Tools things would work across the network from Windows network to my HFS+ disc (if I make it visible as a Samba share?).

Failing that, is there a 'Wake Up Now I Mean It' Vulcan Nerve Pinch for a confused/sleepy Mac, short of using the power switch, which is probably deprecated.
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Old 06-17-2007, 01:20 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Mac wouldn't awaken from sleep when I tried to use the power button after it being off overnight (Have contacted Seagate's

[disambiguation] 'It' being, in this case, the Seagate HD.
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  #5  
Old 06-17-2007, 03:35 PM
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At least hyou have a cause, which is good. You might be able to uninstall their software...
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  #6  
Old 06-17-2007, 05:47 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Originally Posted by dnanian View Post
At least hyou have a cause, which is good. You might be able to uninstall their software...
[rant]
(groan) What software? I bought the hard drive essentially on price/specification and the fact that it has a five-year warranty. I formatted straight over the software on the drive as had no interest in using NTFS at all (and all the help for the software focuses on the idiot-level help for the portable app for Windows synchronisation). The entirety of the information readily available to me for getting started, from reviews and the user manual, was 'Use Disc Utility to format the disc'.

The fact that I then realised that the only interface possible for altering the low-level features was a Windows program I no longer have wasn't precisely my fault. It takes some effort to get to the thing about 'Seagate Tools' and the fact that it might be the only tool I've got for tinkering with the sleep features and might be possible to use with a disc with a non-standard format if I run Seagate Tools from Windows wasn't made at all obvious...
[/rant]

Which rant not being directed at you, obviously, but at the particularly brain-dead technical support from Seagate, their lack of answering their e-mail, the fact that the hard drive may work in Nonstandard Ways, and their failure to give any help to people running operating systems that aren't their favourite that isn't 'reformat your disc'.

Sorry about the venting -- I do believe this isn't really to do with SuperDuper -- the sleep problem has happened twice after using the power button on the drive, and twice directly after running SuperDuper. Since the log seems to get as far as reporting the operation complete, it probably isn't a SD problem.

It's just annoying that I've had to reboot with the power button four times in the past week or so, and am no nearer finding a simple solution to the problem (or even a 'wake up confused mac' keystroke. The hardware of the disc is a good enough deal I want to keep it, but the assumptions the software makes lets it down.

I'll shut up now -- having sorted out to my own mind's dejected satisfaction that it isn't a problem of the product with good support, SuperDuper, but a problem of the product with poor support, Seagate FreeAgent Pro.

R
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  #7  
Old 06-19-2007, 04:56 PM
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Sorry I can't offer more help, but I am a sympathetic ear...
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  #8  
Old 06-19-2007, 09:25 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Am actually glad you took the rant as not directed at you, which was the case.

So there's no keyboard wake-up call for a confused Mac?

I actually posted this comment on a blog community, where I got given the answer 'swap to USB -- it might well sort out your issue because USB is more standard between PC and Mac'.

It's not a great answer (it would require swapping out the firewire adaptor and no longer having the second firewire port immediately available) but I suspect it's a better real-world solution than the options I was trying to think off...
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  #9  
Old 06-20-2007, 07:07 AM
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If the Mac isn't waking up, I can't think of any way to force it. But, since there is a "safe sleep" feature that kicks in when power is completely removed on a laptop, you might want to try removing the battery and then disconnecting the drive.

As far as using USB vs. FireWire, FireWire is generally preferred. But if this particular drive is giving you issues, USB might help.

Maybe you could also send me a system profiler report (XML, ZIPped) to the support address, with the drive and all other peripherals involved, attached. Might be something there.
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  #10  
Old 06-20-2007, 04:14 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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A wise chap on the LJ community for Mac knew the answer immediately, I think:

If it's FW 400 then USB 2 would be just as fast if not faster. The USB bus is handled slightly differently in sleep mode than FW since the mac listens for KM input. I say just use USB 2 on the mac and see if that solves it.

This fits the behaviour exactly: there was no sign of anything going actually wrong (AFAIK), but it was hideous frustrating to have to power down with the power button because the Mac would not re-awaken when I hit the keyboard or mouse.

Since the helpful chap says I'd get little or no benefit at all from the speed of using the FW, what I need to do is unscrew the bottom module, find the USB/eSata module which I think I put in a drawer because I had no immediate use for it, screw in the USB/eSata module and get on with life as normal.

I'll lose the immediate boot-from-backup, and I'll lose the spare FW port, but it's a lot more workable solution than the others I was thinking about. Unsurprisingly, I have not found where I put the module yet, but have little doubt it will fix the problem given the specifics the helpful chap knows about. I'll just have to remember never to let the machine sleep until I find where I put it...

This is, of course, Seagate's fault for not creating a FAQ or manual entry for this specific issue.
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  #11  
Old 06-20-2007, 04:19 PM
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He's not really right about USB2 (it's significantly slower than FW doing typical drive stuff), and FW works fine with sleep in most situations... but, go ahead and try USB. Can't hurt.
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  #12  
Old 06-20-2007, 04:39 PM
R Bygrave R Bygrave is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dnanian View Post
He's not really right about USB2 (it's significantly slower than FW doing typical drive stuff), and FW works fine with sleep in most situations... but, go ahead and try USB. Can't hurt.
I tend to get really conflicting reactions from different bloggers and reviewers about whether FW is that different for backup (as opposed to streaming video), but would settle for getting it to play nicely with sleep at the moment... The power switch is generally deprecated as the way to wake up your machine.
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  #13  
Old 06-20-2007, 04:58 PM
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Oh, agreed: the crash is not good. But it's also not typical.
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