Keep Drive Spinning when nobody is logged in to the Mac

[Trapper John]

I'm trying to find out if Keep My Drive Spinning requires at least one user to be logged in to the Mac at all times in order for it to keep drive spinning.

Will Keep Drive Spinning automatically start and keep my drive spinning when I power up the computer but don't log in?

Similarly, will Keep Drive Spinning continue to keep my drive spinning after I logout and nobody is logged in to the Mac?

I just bought a G-Technology 3GB drive and after the Mac sleeps (say overnight) we can read files on the drive but can't write even though we have r/w permissions on the drive. Rebooting the computer doesn't help. We need to power off/on the drive in order to correct the issue. I'm hoping Keep My Drive Spinning will be the answer. We use the drive for Time Machine backups and have another folder on there as well. Time Machine will fail saying it can't create the backup folder. After we power off/on the drive it's happy and we can force a Time Machine backup and Time Machine will continue to backup on its own schedule until the next time the computer wakes from sleep and then we're back to the can't write to the drive issue.

 Thanks!

[Jon Stovell]

The drive will only be kept awake while a user who has configured Keep Drive Spinning to keep it awake is logged in and while the computer itself is awake. 

• It is perfectly fine for multiple users to each use Keep Drive Spinning to keep a drive awake.
  
• If no users are logged in, nothing will keep the drive awake.
• As it says in the FAQ, "If your computer falls asleep, the drive will be free to go to sleep, too."

By the description of your troubles, however, the problem seems to be some sort of hardware or driver issue with your drive itself. If the drive cannot be written to after the computer wakes up, something is wrong with the drive. Since you recently purchased this drive, I recommend that you take it back to the store and exchange it for a replacement.