Reprinted from TidBITS#802/24-Oct-05 with permission. Copyright (C) 2005, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ MailBITS/24-Oct-05 ------------------ **Preventing Second Drive Sleepiness** -- A while back I wanted some more disk space in my Power Mac G4, but I didn't want to buy a new boot drive to replace the 80 GB drive I've been using for a while. I had a 60 GB drive sitting around, so I installed that in a spare drive bay in the Power Mac. All has been well and good, with one exception: the second drive was constantly spinning down and causing delays whenever Mac OS X decided to spin up the drive, which was frequently, even though the drive sees only sporadic use. My first stop was the Energy Saver preference pane, where I confirmed that I had deselected the "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" checkbox. But that clearly wasn't working. Next stop, Google, where my search turned up a Web site called The X Lab, associated with an ebook called "Troubleshooting Mac OS X." The X Lab site explained that the Energy Saver preference pane was really just a graphical front end to the Unix pmset command. If you select the "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" checkbox, Energy Saver essentially issues the pmset command with the "disksleep 10" (Tiger) or "spindown 10" (Panther) option, where 10 means to spin down the drive after 10 minutes. But as we've seen, leaving that checkbox deselected doesn't work either. What's going on? It turns out that to force the Mac to honor the "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" checkbox being deselected, you must also set the "Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for" slider to "Never." Only then will Energy Saver issue the pmset command with either the "disksleep 0" (Tiger) or "spindown 0" (Panther) option. If you want the best of both worlds - your Mac going to sleep after some amount of idle time and secondary disks not spinning down - you could create an AppleScript script or iKey shortcut that issued the appropriate pmset command at startup. Doing so is left as an exercise to the reader. [ACE] **Encoding Video for iPod** -- Since the release of the new video- enabled iPod, a few noteworthy articles have appeared about getting video content onto the device. iLounge looks at the options for encoding video for the new video iPod: "iPod-Ready Videos? Not So Fast, and Not So Clear." QuickTime 7.0.3 adds an export option to QuickTime (and therefore, to applications such as iMovie) to encode video for iPod, but you don't get to customize its settings. Jeremy Horowitz performed a bunch of tests to see how long it takes to encode, and what the quality of the results was. Also, Jonathan Seff at Playlist shares his experiences encoding content, including ripping DVDs using HandBrake. I watched a few movies on a weekend train trip from Seattle to Portland and back, and found the experience surprisingly good. [JLC] **eMac Fades Away** -- Sources have confirmed that the eMac, Apple's inexpensive all-in-one Mac with a CRT-based screen, is no longer available for individual sale, although educational institutions can still buy the model. It's likely that Apple felt little need to carry on with the eMac line with the Mac mini taking over as the least expensive Mac for individuals and the iMac G5 holding up the all-in-one end of the line. Although it's hard to see Apple keeping the eMac available to educational institutions indefinitely, it does meet a specific need there - schools are less likely to want to use difficult-to-secure Mac minis in public labs, and the iMac is quite a bit pricier than the eMac. [ACE] **DealBITS Drawing: MaxProtect II Winner** -- Congratulations to Paul Perry of sympatico.ca, whose entry was chosen randomly from 452 valid entries in last week's DealBITS drawing and who received a MaxProtect II PowerBook case, worth $49/$59/$69, depending on size. Even if you didn't win, you can still save 10 percent on the MaxProtect II through 02-Nov-05 by entering "DealBits003" in the Additional Comments field when ordering; MaxUpgrades tells us that the discount will not show on order confirmations, but will be accounted for in the amount billed. Keep an eye out for future DealBITS drawings! [ACE] .