Disksomnia

Mac OS X | Free

Disksomnia is a free utility application that stops external disks from going to sleep.

Asleep on the Job

Video editing and sleeping disks are a bad mix, particularly if you have media spread across several external disks. If you’ve ever moved the playhead to another part of the sequence and stared at the spinning beachball while a disk wakes up then you'll know exactly what we mean!

In theory, unchecking this option in the System Preferences > Energy Saver pane should stop disks from going to sleep:

However some disks ignore this setting and will still go to sleep if they haven't been accessed for a few minutes.

Up All Night Disksomnia solves this problem by giving external disks a gentle poke every five minutes if Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express is running. After installing and launching for the first time, Disksomnia is totally automatic and works invisibly in the background. There are no settings, no need to launch the app manually and best of all...no more sleeping disks. System Requirements Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express.