External drive no longer sleeping

Just upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks on my Mid 2011 iMac. Prior to the upgrade, whenever the iMac went to sleep, the external drive (G-Technology G-Drive Firewire) went to sleep too. Now, the G-Drive doesn't sleep. Any idea how to fix this?

Send Apple feedback is a joke.
I have spent the last 3 months with their AE's both on the phone and via email. I have ran programs on my iMacs to help them gather information.
The last word I got from them was to switch back to my old OS which I did do on my Mac Mini server. The only reason I got feedback was because I am still under full warranty.
They know, believe me they know about the issue, but you are right about their silence on it.

Similar Messages

External Drives Won't Sleep

Hi
Since upgrading to Leopard none of my external drives go into sleep mode when not being accessed. They do when connected to other Macs... so that points to the iMac.
Tried resetting the SMC and also 'put hard disk(s) to sleep' is checked in energy saver. Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Many thanks
Colin
PS I use Lacie drives... Quadra D2 and Porsche

I have the exact same problem. I have my energy setting to put my drives to sleep when possible. I also have an external Firewire drive. In Tiger the external drive was sleeping unless I was accessing it. Now with Leopard the drive constantly wakes up. Just now I hit the back button on Safari and the drive woke up. Crazy.
Unfortunately I have no idea what is causing this, but do have the same issue. I see you excluded them from Spotlight. I just tried that and will see what happens. Are you using Firewire or USB for the external drive? I'm going to switch to UBS and see if that makes a difference.
-Dan

Dreamweaver sites on external drive no longer working

Just started having this problem. Sites I previsously created and store on an external drive no longer allow me to edit styles from the CSS Designer and running link checker show all files as being broken. I've deleted caches and even completely reinstalled Dreamweaver CC but nothing. If I move the files to the local drive and update the site settings in Dreamweaver, everything works fine. I have a Lacie 1TB Raid drive...been using this setup for more than a year and have never had a problem before. I ran disk utility and found no errors on the drive. Any ideas?

You may have the same issue that many have had since updating iTunes to version 11: Movies added to iTunes since the upgrade are not appearing on your Apple TV.
If that is the case, here is the solution:
In ITunes, find the movies that your Apple TV isn't seeing.
Highlight them all.
Use Command-I to open the Info window.
Click on Options.
If "Media Kind" is set to "Home Video," change it to "Movie."
Unfortunately, iTunes now thinks any newly-added movie it doesn't immediately recognize is a Home Video until you change it.
Hope this helps.

Mavericks and unmounting external drive issues upon sleep

Greetings fellow Mavericks users,
I'm hoping someone here can provide some insight as to how to correct the issue I'm experiencing.
Little background:
I was using 10.6.8 for years on a 2008 Mac Pro. I saw no reason to update the OS until I recently acquired a USB 3.0 PCI card and an external drive. In order to use my new hardware, I had no choice but to upgrade to a new version of OSX. Rather than spend money, I took advantage of the free 10.9.2 upgrade available for my machine. The upgrade went surprisingly well with no major hiccups or problems encountered. Yes, a few apps and programs I had running prior to the upgrade were no longer compatible but in the grand scheme of things, my Mac Pro was still alive and kicking along with my most important programs and data. In fact, the upgrade to 10.9.2 fixed a sleep issue I had with 10.6.8 which required the use of an app called PleaseSleep. I don't need that app anymore as the machine goes to sleep and wakes up fine.
Now, on to my dilemma. Prior to the upgrade, I was using an external USB 2.0 drive to house media that I'd share between multiple network devices around the house via SMB (AFP stinks in this regard, hence my refusal to use it); i.e. BoxeeBox. I had run out of space on the USB2 drive hence the need to move everything to my new external USB3 drive that's connected to an internal USB3 PCI controller. The first problem I ran into was that Mavericks now uses Apple's own iteration of Samba (SMB2). After a bit of head scratching and research, I used an application called SMBUp as a replacement to Apple's SMB implementation. That's one problem solved. The next thing that I kept running into was that whenever the machine would sleep then wake up again, I'd get an annoying "Disk was not properly ejected" error message. After more head scratching and research, I've discovered that this appears to be a bug in OSX and how the OS interfaces with 3rd party USB controllers. Fine. I purchased a small app called Jettison which for all intents and purposes unmounts any external drives automatically before allowing the system to sleep. This is where my long-winded (apologies) description above starts to come into play. Now that I have the SMB issue figured out and am using Jettison to eject this USB3 drive when the machine sleeps, I've discovered that I'll still get the "Disk did not properly eject" error message despite Jettison IF there are users connected to the USB3 media drive. Is there a work around this where I can either get Jettison or Mavericks to kill the network connection to the share drive before it's unmounted prior to the machine sleeping?
TL:DR?
Using Jettison with Mavericks, I'm still getting "Disk did not eject properly" when waking the machine from sleep mode. Any way to fix this?
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions provided.

I had the same problem with Time Machine and solved it by enabling "Enable Power Nap" in Energy Saver:
System Preferences...
Energy Saver
Restore Defaults
Check "Enable Power Nap: While sleeping, your Mac can back up using Time Machine and periodically check for new email, calendar, and other iCloud updates."
2013 21.5 iMac
OSX Mavericks
Seagate 1 TB slim USB 3.0 (power is drawn from USB port), formatted to Mac Journaling File System

Daisy-Chained External Drive No Longer Mounting

I have two external hard drives daisy-chained (firewire 800) to my iMac. The hard drive directly connected my iMac mounts fine. The daisy-chained hard drive no longer mounts, after mounting perfectly fine for a few months. I've tried restarting, etc with no success. Any help would be appreciated.

moretoexplore wrote:
No, it does not mount directly. I did however try using the other hard drive's power cord and it mounted without problem. But this doesn't fix the problem.. only one drive is mounting. At least it seems I have ruled out a more serious problem with the drive itself. I'm contacting Lacie to get a new power cord. Hopefully, with a new power cord, this will resolve the issue and it isn't some sort of daisy-chain issue.
I think you have solved the problem by elimination.
You can prove that it's the power cord by using the "bad" one on the working drive. If it stops working, it's guaranteed to be the power cord.
I believe that there were some issues with some of the LaCie Power Supplies.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

External Drive No Longer Visible

My external drive is no longer showing up either in the finder, on the desktop or if I click the computer name under the devices tab on the sidebar. The only way to access this drive at all is to open up disk utilities, select the drive, right click the drive and choose Open "XXXX". If I choose Reveal "XXXX" in Finder it opens to the Volumes area and that drive is not visible.(see screenshot) The finder preferences have external drives set to show up in the sidebar and on the desktop.
I can access folders and files on the drive if I place a shortcut for that file/folder on the desktop. But even when using this method the drive shows up in the sidebar but is grayed out. (see screen capture below)
This drive is shared via Mountain Lion Server and shows up fine for systems connecting to it via the network.
I recently manually changed the permissions of this volume and propagated them via the server utility (we were having permissions issues with certain folders and files for server users). After that I ran a couple of updates to the computer. I suspect one of these was the culprit, although that could be just a coincidence.
We have a bit for bit copy of this drive (SuperDuper) that is on an internal drive in this computer and it shows up fine.
Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I am going to try trashing the p-list file, but as this is an actively used server I can't take it down for any length of time during working hours.
Facts:
Mac Pro 5,1 Quad Core Xeon
OS 10.82
The Drive is a 13TB Promise V-Track RAID connected via Fibre Channel
Drive shows up as Mounted in Disk Utility
External Drives are set to be visible in Finder & Sidebar Preferences

Update:
Ran ANOTHER server update from the APP store. Then rebooted. Nothing changed.
Found another thread that suggested deleted you com.apple.finder.plist and rebooting so I gave that a try. Now NONE of my drives are showing up in the finder other than the drive the OS lives on.
Same behavior and I can still access the drives via Disk Utility using "Open XXX " command.
For now I have created Aliases to both so I can at least get to them via the desktop.
H-E-L-P
Please

External drives won't sleep properly

Hi
I have my preferences set to allow drives to sleep when possible.
In Tiger this meant that my external drives slept most of the time. They would awaken only when directly accessed by the Finder or an application.
In Leopard my externals are constantly waking.
I have them excluded from Spotlight. They will start when I access something in the Finder that has nothing to do with the drives. They will also start when I access an app like safari.
Any ideas what is happening?

I have the exact same problem. I have my energy setting to put my drives to sleep when possible. I also have an external Firewire drive. In Tiger the external drive was sleeping unless I was accessing it. Now with Leopard the drive constantly wakes up. Just now I hit the back button on Safari and the drive woke up. Crazy.
Unfortunately I have no idea what is causing this, but do have the same issue. I see you excluded them from Spotlight. I just tried that and will see what happens. Are you using Firewire or USB for the external drive? I'm going to switch to UBS and see if that makes a difference.
-Dan

Formatting Seagate 1TB external drive - How long does it take?

I'm 20+ minutes into erasing this disc and see no way to monitor any progress.
I've got a blue-stripe barber pole bar spinning along next to a line that reads: newfs_hfs:/dev/rdisk1s1: partition size is not a multiple of 4K.
Anybody know what that means?
Anybody have an idea how long it takes to wipe 1TB?
TA

Formatting should be instant. It sounds like you aren't just formatting, but also writing zeros or something. If you are using Zero Out Data, I just did that to several new 1TB internal and external drives, and I think it took about 2.5 hours each. Using a Mac Pro and eSATA. It might take longer on a laptop, not sure.
The time seemed appropriate because that was similar to how long it took to clone my machine backups onto them. Each full clone took over 2 hours of copying. Either way, it's writing as fast as it can.
If you used 7-Pass or 35-Pass Erase, frankly you're going to wait days.
Remember, we're talking about one freaking terabyte of data to write. Just a few years ago, it was inconceivable that anyone would need to do that at home. It felt like long enough waiting for my old 250GB disks to zero out, and these are 4x that.

Tiger, iTunes library on external drive, no longer recognised

Still using Tiger on the iMac.
Software update caem up with iphoto/Pro Apps updates and a security update.
Duly installed the lot.
When I rebooted my heart sank when iTunes could not find the external drive library.
Rebooted several times, no joy, thought "why do discs fail a few days after you think I need to back that up soon?".
At this point also realsied the significance of telling everyone not to rely on AppleTv for a backup, having not backed up recent weeks iTunes Store purchases.
Tachycardic and nervous connected said drive to the Macbook running Leopard and it worked instantly.
Back to the iMac, no luck, and after much testing found the drive is simply no longer recognised on the Belkin hub it's been on for about a year. Other identical drives are still recognised.
Unplugging the hub and connecting the drive to the Mac direct it's recognised again. Absolutely reproducible and I can't explain it.
Have backed the content up now, but I'm convinced this is related to latest security update or peerhaps Apple team hacking into my iMac after all my negative comments about take 2
So, I know this may be a bit OT, but then again it is to do with the iTunes library foir AppleTV.
Any similar experiences or suggestions?
Good time to remind everyone - remember to back up your media files - these things always happen out of teh blue.
AC

Still using Tiger on the iMac.
Software update caem up with iphoto/Pro Apps updates and a security update.
Duly installed the lot.
When I rebooted my heart sank when iTunes could not find the external drive library.
Rebooted several times, no joy, thought "why do discs fail a few days after you think I need to back that up soon?".
At this point also realsied the significance of telling everyone not to rely on AppleTv for a backup, having not backed up recent weeks iTunes Store purchases.
Tachycardic and nervous connected said drive to the Macbook running Leopard and it worked instantly.
Back to the iMac, no luck, and after much testing found the drive is simply no longer recognised on the Belkin hub it's been on for about a year. Other identical drives are still recognised.
Unplugging the hub and connecting the drive to the Mac direct it's recognised again. Absolutely reproducible and I can't explain it.
Have backed the content up now, but I'm convinced this is related to latest security update or peerhaps Apple team hacking into my iMac after all my negative comments about take 2
So, I know this may be a bit OT, but then again it is to do with the iTunes library foir AppleTV.
Any similar experiences or suggestions?
Good time to remind everyone - remember to back up your media files - these things always happen out of teh blue.
AC

LaCie external drives will not sleep

Why are my three LaCie external drives not going to sleep with the new OS X Mavericks?

The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
I have a feeling that the partition map is bad. Does the drive itself report to DU? If the drive does show up, you can select that, and click the Repair Disk button under the First Aid tab. If that doesn't fix it, with the drive selected, click the partition tab and re-partition the drive. After that, I would erase the newly created volumes with 1-pass/zero out option selected and restore the data that was on the external from TM.
If none of this works or if the drive itself (not the volumes) doesn't show up in DU, you either have a bad drive or bad controller in the external case. How old is the Ultramax? Just wondering if it might still be under manufacturer's warranty. I would check to see if you are still eligible from the manufacturer's warranty and get the whole external unit replaced. If you are out of warranty, I think it likely that you need to replace that external with a new one. I've had a drive go bad in an external case (this one I could still mount but the heads would 'freeze') and the controller on another external go bad (this one, the drive would not report to DU so I took the drive out of the enclosure, stuck the drive in another case and there was no problem with the drive.)

IMac repeatedly corrupting external drive directories in sleep mode

When putting my iMac into sleep mode or when it goes into sleep mode after a period of inuse I keep getting the "improper eject" message. After waking the iMac I sometimes get the "disc not initialized" message and discover that the directory has been lost. It's happened to 4 different external drives in the space of a month.
The disks are connected via firewire 800. I have recently added a firewire hub but the problem was happening prior to and post this addition. I can't think of any other changes I've made to my set up that may be causing this behaviour. Previously I've had no problems of this nature in the 2 years since I purchased the iMac.
The drives run without this problem when connected to my MacBookPro.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggextions for running any diagnostic tests I coulod run?
Thanks in advance.

I have the same issue on my 2011 MBP. I have three FW800 drives daisy chained together. The first drive in the series disconnects when my computer goes to sleep and I get the error stating the drive wasn't dismounted properly. The other two drives stay connected fine. I don't have to close the lid, it will do this after the computer goes to sleep based on my power saving settings.
The drive that disconnects is a 500GB G-Drive. The second drive is a 1 TB Hitachi drive mounted in a IcyDock. The third drive is a 500GB G-Mini Drive.
I had the same three drives connected to my previous 2007 MBP and never had the issue. The issue started when I purchased my new MBP in July. My software is up to date and I'm use OS X Lion.

External drive no longer mounts or unmounts or formats. Help!

I have a 1TB external Seagate drive which is used to store my time machine backup for an iMac (2010). My time machine is failing as it says there is no backup disk. I ran disk utility. I see it on the external drive on the list below the line on the drive listings. I see the external drive and the time machine volume indented below it. I verified the external disk and it says it is fine. However it will not let me mount the external drive or the time machine partition. I cannot even re-format the disk because it says it cannot be unmounted (which is obvious it it does not let me mount it). It is connecting to the drive because it can see the verify results. I also tried every combination of unplugging power and cables to both the unit and the Mac itself.
Question(s):
1. Is there anyway to remount the external seagate drive?
2. Can I format it without mounting it. I don't care if I lose anything as it is all time machine backup files only
3. Do I need to format it on my windows PC and then reformat it again on a Mac!?
Help I am at my wit's end!!
Thanks
RZ

Disk Utility - Format, Erase, or Reformat a Drive

External Drive No Longer Accessible after 10.9.5 Update

After upgrading to 10.9.5 from 10.9.4, I have lost access to my external drive (USB connected) used by Time Machine. The icon on the desktop is amber. Disk Utility can not repair it. I get "Error Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup." Also.. "Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map." The disk format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If I launch Windows 7 (using Fusion 6) on the iMac, it recognizes the drive (I have the HFS+ driver installed.) I can read and write to the drive and see all the time machine backups on the Win 7 virtual machine. I am logged in to my iMac as a Standard User. Logging in as the Administrator has no effect. The drive can not be repaired or formatted. This is a late 2009 iMac with 12GB ram. Original OS was Snow Leopard. It was upgraded from 10.6.8 to the full Mavericks OS.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.
Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Time Machine backup on external drive no longer working after upgrade to Yosemite

Can anyone explain why, after upgrade to Yosemite, Time Machine is no loger working? Backup on external drive stops few seconds after it has started. What can I do?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Try running a DVD Lens Cleaner disc through it, a little bit of dust or dirt is all it takes to throw them out and it might just be co-incidental with the upgrade.

External drives no longer show up - light is on but nobody home!

Hey all,
Still using an old iMac G4 and it works great... 10.2.8
(and ibook 10.3.9)
plugging in some Maxtor External drives and they don't show up (mount)
I hear them. The light is on.
Checking in disk utility shows that computer senses them and says I can repair permissions (have not tried that yet) but they never appear
on the desktop. These drives are more than 5 years old and haven't been used in about a year - my mistake. use it or lose it apparently.
If anyone can throw a life raft I'll grab it.
thanks,
Al

Dale,
They don't show up in Disk Util.
Nothing to click on.
When I plug them in I get a message saying do I want to initialize or ignore?
I am assuming initialize would erase everything but there is stuff on them so I don't want to erase.
thanks,
Al

External drive no longer sleeping

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