Consider this as an informational posting related to the Studio Edition II and SATA interface.
This drive if not accessed for 10 minutes enters a standby state. If the drive is in standby and the host computer goes to sleep, the drive will be unresponsive when the host computer is woken up from sleep. The only means to resolve this situation is to disconnect the SATA and power connections from the drive and then reconnect.
Historically one can find multiple postings on the Internet related to Western Digital drives experiencing a similar problem (freeze) while using USB or 1394 (Firewire) interfaces. It would appear that this issue is NOT present when using the Studio Edition II’s FIrewire interface. I haven’t tested the USB interface.
It might be the case the the freezing issue cited is the fault of the Studio Edition II’s SATA firmware, or potentially the SATA host adapter utilized in my Mac Pro. Given the tools at hand I have no way to determine if the drive or host adapter (driver) is at fault.
Note that the SATA interface I’m using in my Mac Pro is FirmTek’s SeriTek/2ME4-E. In all fairness with the exception of the problem cited the combination of the 2ME4-E and Studio Edition II work. Transfer speed with Time Machine can be as high as 100 MB/s where small file reads appear to be the limiting factor (e.g. seek time).
A work around that has potential is to employ sleepwatcher (google it) where the sleep script writes a hidden file onto the drive, thus waking the drive from standby just prior to the host system entering sleep.
