Lately I have noticed that when browsing the web my external hard drive would spin up when there seemed no need. I had just given into the mysterious and not concerned myself with this until yesterday.
After a few searches, I turned up a post on Apple’s discussion boards entitled Safari pauses & spins up ext HDs with ATS Autoactivation errors. While I have not found the errors in my logs refered to by the OP, I have noticed the exact same symptoms.
Using the symptoms and discoveries by W. Raideer and strangebirds as a guideline, I found a solution to the issue. While this may in fact be a bug, it turns out that if you disable Spotlight on the external drive this activity ceases, at least in my case.
To quote the Help documentation for Font Book on the Automatic Activation feature:
Note that if you turn off Spotlight searching for any folder or disk connected to your computer, Font Book can’t find and enable fonts in those locations.
After listing my external drive in the Spotlight preference pane section labeled Privacy, I have ceased to have this particular issue. While this may not be advisable or desirable, depending on the content of the external drive, I have noticed no detrimental effect by disabling Spotlight on the drive.
Apple, Mac OS X
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