If you'd like to learn how to use 'cron' to keep your second drive occupied and awake, read the rest of this article.
You must follow the easy steps below in the Terminal as ordinary user (not as root):
- create a plain text file with the name "Activate" on your second hard disk (with me it is called "Work" in the directory "Documents"; i.e. /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate) with the contents:
#!/bin/sh
The last line should be an enter. Change its rights to executable with
cd /
ls -la > /dev/nullchmod ugo+x Activate
This shell script does basically nothing important except run quickly.
- create a plain text file in your ~/Documents directory with the name "spin" and with the contents:
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*<tab>
(This all should be on one line; it's shown here on two for the sake of narrowness! Of course you should use the tab-key and the enter-key on the indicated <tab> and <enter> places. Please replace "Work" and "Documents" with the names of the directories where you've put the "Activate" file! N.B. there is a space between "sh" and "/Volumes....!!") This "spin" file should be readable for all (chmod ugo+r). It is the material to be read by the crontab and it means basically: run every five minutes the shell script "Activate"
[space]sh /Volumes/Work/Documents/Activate<enter>
- create a plain textfile in your home directory ~ with name ".login" (or add lines to an already existing .login file) and enter the following lines (end with an <enter>!):
alias cronoff crontab -r
alias spinoff crontab ~/Documents/spin
Hope this helps! Any comments welcome.
Loek

