Energy Saver - Computer Sleep

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Hello,

My Imac no longer automatically goes to sleep after set time. If you leave the computer unattended it will stay on until it is manually put to sleep or shutdown. The screen sleeps but not the computer. I can not see any reason for the change to occur.

I have checked and keep re-adjusting the Energy Saver preferences but this makes no difference.

I hope someone can help me fix this.
Many Thanks.
 
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Helps if you provide model and operating system, however the 'Put hard disks to sleep' box is ticked, Sytem Preferencew > Eneergy Saver?
 
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Helps if you provide model and operating system, however the 'Put hard disks to sleep' box is ticked, Sytem Preferencew > Eneergy Saver?

Imac 9,1 running Snow Leopard.

Yes put hard disk to sleep box is ticked and Energy Saver times set.
I have tried restarting computer, checking activity monitor, quitting all applications and leaving computer but it still won't sleep.
No Spotlight indexing, time machine off etc...
 

chscag

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Try doing a SMC reset. It's easy to do on an iMac: Shut down and unplug the machine from the AC receptacle. Leave it for around 10-15 minutes and then plug it back it and restart. Check to see if it goes to sleep on its own.
 
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Try doing a SMC reset. It's easy to do on an iMac: Shut down and unplug the machine from the AC receptacle. Leave it for around 10-15 minutes and then plug it back it and restart. Check to see if it goes to sleep on its own.

Done this but still not working. Any other ideas?
Anything in particular I should be checking for in Activity Monitor?
 

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Anything in particular I should be checking for in Activity Monitor?

Any activity that would prevent sleep. It could be some background process or just about anything. What don't you try something else for us?

Restart your iMac in safe boot mode. (hold down the shift key and restart) Safe boot mode stops all third party drivers, startup programs, and verifies the hard drive. It also kills the sound - you can ignore that. Run that way for awhile and see if it will sleep. Let us know.
 
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Any activity that would prevent sleep. It could be some background process or just about anything. What don't you try something else for us?

Restart your iMac in safe boot mode. (hold down the shift key and restart) Safe boot mode stops all third party drivers, startup programs, and verifies the hard drive. It also kills the sound - you can ignore that. Run that way for awhile and see if it will sleep. Let us know.

Thankyou for the suggestion. I have done this but it still wont go to sleep automatically.

I have also tried booting up Mavericks from an external hard drive (but on the same Imac) and confirmed that it does go to sleep after a set time.

Any other ideas? Thanks again.
 

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Well, that's interesting. Your iMac will sleep when booted from an external hard drive but not from the internal drive. Not sleeping in Safe Mode eliminates third party activity so it has to either be something going on in the background or the hard drive. How full is your hard drive; in other words, how much free space remains? A full or nearly full hard drive will generally not sleep because of the swapping going on.

Something else you can try.... create a test account and give it admin rights. Log on to the test account and see if you can put the machine to sleep. Let us know.
 
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How full is your hard drive; in other words, how much free space remains? A full or nearly full hard drive will generally not sleep because of the swapping going on.

Quite full. Free space is about 60gb on a 320gb drive.

I also just tested my macbook which has even less free hard drive space (only 14gb) and sleep is working fine.

Something else you can try.... create a test account and give it admin rights. Log on to the test account and see if you can put the machine to sleep. Let us know.

I tried this but unfortunately still not working.

Many thanks again.
 

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Well, we've eliminated software and any errors with your user account. That really leaves us with hardware as probably the culprit. And.. since your iMac will sleep when booted from an external drive, that leaves the internal hard drive.

Here's what I now suspect: You state that you have 60 GB remaining of a 320 GB hard drive, but in all likelihood the free space that remains is probably fragmented. In other words, the 60 GB is not a continuous 60 GB. That forces swapping which means your hard drive is always busy doing something. it's probably time for a new hard drive which is not an easy do it yourself task as with a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

A little info about swapping: When you put your machine to sleep, it has to create an image of the current state of the hard drive such as programs running, desktop, icons, folders, and so forth. It needs to do that so when it wakes up you're back in business. You can see by this that if not enough continuous space exists for that image, your iMac is going to be pressed to find the space and will flounder around instead of sleeping.
 
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t's probably time for a new hard drive which is not an easy do it yourself task as with a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Thanks for all your help.

As an alternative to replacing the Hard drive (at the moment) maybe I could relocated all my Itunes music and Iphoto library onto an external hard drive and run them off that. I could then wipe my hard drive and clean install, using my time machine backup to replace documents etc... minus the music and photos of course which are already transferred to the external drive.

I would assume this could act as a type of defrag for the drive as well as freeing up space?

How much free space do you recommend?

In the meantime I will have to look into upgrading the hard drive. I heard something about finding drives with heat sensors compatible with apple but will need to look further into this. I'm also assuming it is best to get this done by an Apple repair rather than messing about with pulling the screen off!

Off the top of your head any ideas what sort of cost would be involved in the actual installation of a new drive?

Thanks

P.S. While typing this post I notice harryb2448 posted regarding Idefrag - Thanks, I will give that a try too.
 
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Perhpas with that amount of drive used, iDefrag may be of value. Download the demo version and run it and see what is reported.


Coriolis Systems :: Products :: iDefrag

Have just run the Idefrag demo and here are the statistics.

8789376_orig.png


As an alternative to replacing the drive, could I move Itunes and Iphoto library to external drive and run off that and then do a clean install.

I'm assuming that formatting the hard drive, doing a clean install and using time machine to backup documents etc would act as a defrag?
 
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I have transferred my Itunes and Iphoto libraries to an external drive and now have 125gb free space.

The computer still won't go to sleep - however I am guessing that if fragmentation is the issue that it would probably continue to be a problem even once I free up space?

I guess the options now is to either live with it or wipe the hard drive and do a clean install.
However is a clean install (and restoring with time machine) likely to solve the issue - I am guessing this would act as a sort of defrag for the hard drive?
 

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However is a clean install (and restoring with time machine) likely to solve the issue - I am guessing this would act as a sort of defrag for the hard drive?

Give it a try. That acts like a total defrag and a lot less expensive than having to buy iDefrag. Let us know if it works.
 
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Have you got any sharing processes enabled and running??

Your Mac won't sleep normally if it's busy file sharing for example.
 
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BTW: How do you know that your Mac isn't actually going to sleep??

We can't even hear our Macs running when they're On.

Regardless, why sleep you Mac anyway?? All our Macs have been set to "Never" sleep for years now, and besides, the OS won't run any after midnight maintenance routines if they are put into Sleep mode.

Just saying... ;)
 
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Have you got any sharing processes enabled and running??

Your Mac won't sleep normally if it's busy file sharing for example.

All file sharing is off.


BTW: How do you know that your Mac isn't actually going to sleep??

We can't even hear our Macs running when they're On.

Regardless, why sleep you Mac anyway?? All our Macs have been set to "Never" sleep for years now, and besides, the OS won't run any after midnight maintenance routines if they are put into Sleep mode.

Just saying... ;)

I can hear the fan going plus the usb mouse glows red.

I put the computer to sleep when not using to both save electricity and reduce unnecessary wear and tear on the computer. Seems no point leaving the computer running unless it is doing something of use - downloading, backing up, indexing etc. However if I am just leaving the computer for a short while and coming back then that is a different story.
 
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Hmmm...??? I really wonder on what your real savings are. Especially considering that computers do NOT like to be turned Off and On, and is a good way to shorten their life span. Especially the HDD hard drives.

Apple's listed power specs are high, especially for my mid-late 2011 27" 2.7GHz iMac, maybe due to the Energy Star Rating methods of measurement, but I can tell you that with my Energy Saver set for the Display to go off in 30 min, and the hard drive set to never, when I step away from my iMac the measured power goes to about 40 w then drops to 7W, and after about two hours, that drops to just under 1W and stays that way until I "wake it" in the morning. Barely measurable with a watt meter I've used.

No sound at all from any hard drive any time also the fans are basically inaudible, and I use a Logitech wireless mouse, no visible lights, and its two AA batteries last about three+ years. That's not a misprint!!

Your choice though I guess as to where the real savings might be in the long run...
 

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