External taking time starting up

[Willis]

I Have a iMac with a external 500GB hard drive attached by firewire 800 and when I seem to want to do anything it has to wait till the hard drive kicks in and fires up, any suggestion on how I can make this faster or not look on the external. Hope this make sense.

 

[Philtor]

Sounds like there may be some sort of power saving feature enabled. I don't use Mac's so I wouldn't know where to start but does the external HDD have any power saving features that can be enabled/disabled?