Forcing External Drives To Sleep

Greetings:
Subject line says it all; how can I force my external drives to sleep? My LaCie Quad does so instantly when unmounted via Disk Utility but my IBM DeskStars keep running no matter what. Much appreciate any help!
JimWG

Hi James, a lot of that is going to be controlled the the HD itself, and/or the chipset used in the case, but these may help you accomplish it...
http://lowendmac.com/musings/06/0217.html
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=253301

Similar Messages

Finder crashes with External Drive on Sleep Mode

I purchased my new iMac 21,5" less than a week ago, and I haven't had a problem with it except for one that it's been bugging me a lot.
I have a LaCie 1TB Quadra d2 external drive that I use to store footage (since it's HD, the filesize won't fit in my 500TB internal hard drive), but I noticed that sometimes when LaCie external drive enters in Sleep Mode, the Finder freezes and the only two ways around this, is to force reboot, because the Finder won't answer and won't open again, or unplugging the external drive without ejecting him first, which it's not safe for me to do, because I'm afraid of hurting the device, and the files in it are pretty important.
This happens almost everytime, especially after a long time on sleep mode. I usually leave Final Cut Pro transferring files all night (since it takes a long time) so I kinda need the sleep mode, but when I wake up, Finder and Final Cut Pro won't answer.
I updated to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on day one. Is there a way to fix this? Is it normal? I read somewhere that some users were having trouble with external drives on Sleep Mode, but I can't seem to find any further information about this problem.
Thanks!

I've got a MacBook Pro 13.3" that's a little over a month old, with a LaCie 1TB LaCie d2 Quadra with USB 3.0, #301542U and I'm suffering the same problems and a few others with it. I've got a partition on it set up as my Time Machine backup drive. I've turned off the Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in the Energy Saver preferences but I'm still having the sleep problem with it. According to the LaCie Manual:
By default, your drive will enter Eco Mode after 30 minutes of inactivity in order to conserve energy. To exit Eco Mode, simply access data on the drive and the disk will automatically restart. You can manage this feature using LaCie Desktop Manager. Click the Eco tab.
The LaCie Desktop Manager (in my case) only takes me to the Energy Saver Preferences in OS X to adjust the time there. Turning off Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible doesn't seem to make any difference, the drive still goes to sleep after 30 minutes. However, after 15 minutes the drive seems to wake back up, but then during the next 15 minutes goes comatose (no power light). Sometimes it will go through multiples of these sleep wake cycles without going into a coma, but eventually it does go into a coma. This happens in between hourly Time Machine backups.
After locking up Finder, Disk Utility and Time Machine multiple times trying to access the drive in this state I figured out that I could cycle the power switch to regain use of it (with a Finder warning of course) but this will only lead to file corruption eventually and I shouldn't have to resort to this. I've also dismounted it, expecting it to turn off and instead it goes into an extended spin down cycle (rapidly flashing light) and never turns off (or goes to sleep or what ever it's supposed to do) and once again requires turning the power switch off.
This is just too unpredictible and unrelable for me and as soon as I get the opportunity to do a 7 pass erase I'll be returning to the place of purchase. Based on the reviews of other external hard drives a drive from another company doesn't look to be much better of a prospect so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Force external drive to remain in stand by after Wake up

I have a WD My Book external drive connected to my iMac 27" via USB 3.0
The drive is initially in a stand by mode (drive doesn't spin, it's visible in disk utility).
Now when backup script starts, it first checks to see if drive is mounted. If it's not it then mounts it (drive begins to spin), then the backup process starts, and lastly the disk is ejected (drive stops spining, it's again in standby)
All this works, however my problem is when my mac wakes from sleep, drive automatically starts to spin and is mounted. I want the drive to always remain in stand by except from when it is manually mounted.
How can I achieve such a thing? I have tried the folowing:
Disabling the USB Mass storage: requires restart and results in all USB ports being disabled, which is unaccepted
Setting the drive to "Power up in Stand By feature" with linux command "hdparm": Even tho hdparm says the disk supports this feauture, I've got I/O error
Setting the jumper to proper position to enable PUIS: the white lid is switched on, but nothing happens (not visible in disk utility)
Adding the line in /etc/fstab to prevent auto mounting, which partially works. (drive still spins after wake up)

Thanks for your reply.
There is only the spinning wheel in the finder sidebar when it is actually backing up.
Not after it has finished according to the progress bar in TM Preferences. When that has finished, the Hard Drive just carries on gurguling and ticking.
Until I drag the volume icon to the trash then it stops. AND I have just noticed the wheel starts spinning in the finder window after I have done this and it starts backing up again. It does not eject but I get a notice saying " Is in use could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again." (well I do have applications open). Then after this back up all is quiet. But the cycle starts off again after the next sheduled backup starts.
I can not see anything called backupd in activity monitor while the noise is current.
The only activity seems to be from "Activity Monitor" "Finder" "System Preferences" "SystemUIServer"
In 'Console' under All Messages it says Backup Completed succesfully. followed by
kernel............SetCryptoKey R: len 32, idx 1
Sorry I can't make things any clearer.

Mac mini usb 3.0 and external drive with Sleep issue

I have now a new mini with USB3.0.
I attached an external sharkoon sata quickport h3.
If i use an USB 2 cable everything is fine.
When i use USB 3 cable then after sleep, OSX says that the external drive was not properly dismounted....

So, i tried an external USB3 2,5" harddrive and it works directly on the mini.
When i plug this drive to the sharkoon, it doesn't work.
So it seems that the USB3 Hub of sharkoon isn't working properly with the power managament of osx.

Is there a program that unmount & mount external drive before sleep ??

Im looking a software or a script that will allow to unmount NAS drive before sleep and mount it back on wake up.
Thanks for any help

axis5150 wrote:
I know it may be easier to sleep the display, but its energy saving ant disk life matter to me, besides when its not NAS is not unmounted Mac uses it from time to time even wile asleep.
The energy savings is minuscule and most electromechanical devices fail when starting up, not when running. As for the NAS thing, I'll leave that to others, since I don't have a network or depend on ext HDs being tethered to my machines.

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

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

Stop OS X accessing external drives when opening or saving?

My iMac, running OS X 10.6.2, insists on always accessing my two external Western Digital 1Tb drives each time I select File - Open.. or File - Save. (the drives are daisy-chained, using firewire, in case this i significant).
When I click on either of these menu options there is a 3-second wait and then the spinning beach ball appears for about 10-20 seconds, before the dialog box appears.
How can I stop this?

You may need to restart the computer. Or the external drives have sleep controlled in the firmware. Or there's a problem with a preference file. Try removing the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file to the Desktop. Restart the computer and then reconfigure Energy Saver preferences.

Unable to write to external drive after drive sleeps

This topic seems to be all over the place. I want to know if there is a fix.
I have a number of external disk drives. They are connected via USB and firewire. About 30% of the time, if a drive has been put in sleep mode and then later awakened, I am unable to write to it. If I try to dismount the drive I get a -50 error that the drive is in use. But that is not true because nothing but the finder is running. If I look the console log there are lots of the following messages.
Dec 6 15:50:43 squid fseventsd[45]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/Calvary1TB/.fseventsd/63657332a56b8d30 (Invalid argument). mount point /Volumes/Calvary1TB/.fseventsd
Dec 6 15:50:50 squid UnmountAssistant[1463]:
The drive in question is the CAXM Calvary1TB drive. BTW when I received the Calvary disk drive, I reformatted it OSX journaled with a GUID partition before using it. All my other 8 TB of storage is formatted the same way and I had no problems before Snow Leopard. Anyhow, If I force a dismount, all returns to normal. OR if I disable sleep the drive drives options in the energy saver preferences, the problem disappears. But then none of the drives ever spin down.
Once every 50 or so forced dismounts (it happens a lot), OSX will crash with the kiss of death display.
This problem did not exist in pre Snow Leopard, so obviously changes were made to the file system and not properly tested. Anyone have any idea when this will be fixed.

The drive in question is the CAXM Calvary1TB drive.
Calvary lists this drive series only in its "Windows PC" section at http://www.cavalrystorage.com/pr_index.htm. This could be a problem because different manufacturers use different methods to implement wake-from-sleep (or more generally, energy management features) in the support circuitry of external drives. IOW, there are no universal standards for this, so manufacturers may or may not design their implementations for cross-platform compatibility.
Unfortunately, since Windows PC's dominate the market some manufacturers use energy management methods in some or all of their designs that work reliably only with that platform. For this reason, there is always some risk of unexpected behavior when using external drives not specifically marketed as Mac OS X compatible with a Mac. (This is not a problem with "raw" internal drives directly connected to a Mac's SATA interface because there is no support circuitry involved.)
Since you already have invested in these drives, your best bet is to contact Calvary & see if they can offer a solution. If you are lucky, they may have a firmware updater for the CAXM series that works reliably with Snow Leopard; if not, they may simply tell you not to let the drives sleep, or that they don't support the CAXM series with Macs & you are on your own.

Make External Drive Sleep?

New Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion, which spends most nights plugged in, with an external drive attached for Time Machine backup.
My former backup drive, a Seagate Freeagent Go, would go to sleep whenever my laptop was asleep, or when ejected. When the computer woke up, the drive did too and all was well (unlike the problems a few users seem to have had with drives not waking).
I recently installed a 512GB Crucial SSD (MS PowerPoint opens in about 1 second!), and moved the TOSHIBA MK7559 750 GB drive that came inside the Macbook Pro to an external USB3 case, so that I would have a bigger backup capacity. It works very well for backup, but the drive keeps spinning even if the computer is asleep, and even after being ejected. The check box in Energy Saver Prefs is checked to allow drives to sleep when possible.
It is almost certain that problem is with the drive case's firmware, not with my Mac or the OS. What I am looking for is a workaround. Is anyone aware of any utilities that might let me force it to spin down? I am concerned about the long term reliability of the drive if it keeps running 24 hours a day.

Most of the time this feature is built into the Drive Enclosure and has nothing to do with the operating system running the computer.
So it would seem the enclosure you have does not support such a feature.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

Is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on it's own when plugged in with firewire?

Hi, is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on the desktop? I have a new Hitachi SATA III 2 TB Ultrastar that won't show up like all the other drives when plugged in. So I can't partition, repair, format etc with Disk Utility, Disk Drill, Tech Tools etc. How do I make it visible?
I use the FW 400 to 800 adapter and a FW hub.
Thanks,
W.

ok, I did find the log in Diskutil of what happened, I just can't figure out why it happened and how to start over:
2014-04-20 13:42:08 -0400: Disk Utility started.
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Preparing to erase : “Terra 8”
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           1 volume will be created
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Name                    : “Terra 8”
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Size                    : 2 TB
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     File system          : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Unmounting disk
2014-04-20 13:45:00 -0400: Creating the partition map
2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Waiting for the disks to reappear
2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Formatting disk2s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Terra 8
2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Initialized /dev/rdisk2s2 as a 2 TB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 155648k journal
2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Mounting disk
2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400: Erase complete.
2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400:
- That was it, gone.....

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

External Hard Drive not sleeping or waking

Hi I have a mac mini with Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2. I recently purchased a iomega 2 TB external hard drive that came pre loaded with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) pre formatted on it. I use 800 FireWire for the connection. I had no problems with the drive mounting and transferring files until I put my computer to sleep. I took me some time to figure out that the sleep function was the cause of the problem I was having. The drive would still be listed in finder after my computer woke but when accessed finder would freeze up and I would get the spinning cursor. Also when I left it to sleep over night I would find the drive off and an error that it had been ejected wrong.
I watched the drive when I put my computer to sleep get the sleep command and flash for a second and start to sleep but then come on again as if there was an error in the sleep command from my mac. If I wake my computer again to see the action of the drive it then goes to sleep when my computer is waking. I am guessing the command is the same to the drive from my mac. Wake or sleep, it just depends on the drives current state as to whether it sleeps or wakes.
My fix so far is to not let my computer sleep at all. As well I have to choose in system preferences to not allow the drives to sleep. Did notice after some time the external hard drive will sleep anyway from idle time but now my mac is not sleeping obviously. Or I have to eject the disk manually and then turn off the external hard drive then put my computer to sleep.
Am I missing something here? It's either a hard drive error or a software bug in Lion.

Hi,
Please post the HP product number for your PC. How to Find the HP Model Number and the HP Product Number or let HP automatically find your PC model number and HP network attached printers. This will allow others to review your issue, make suggestions and review your responses. This is usually the best way to get assistance.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

External Hard drive Auto-sleep Disable

I have a problem with my external drive, a Seagate GoFlex 2TB. Basically the drive goes to sleep while I am transfering files and freezes up Finder. From what I have read, a possible solution would be to disable the auto sleep in the drive firmware but I am unable to find software that will allow me to do this. Using the seettings in Engery Preferences does not effect the external drive. It is appartent that I can change the sleep timer Using CHUD Ulitities, which is included in XCode in Lion, so I am waiting for XCode to download. I have no idea where to start with CHUD though, any suggestions as to another application that will help me out with this problem, or how to change the Sleep timer using CHUD?
Thanks

No, Energy Saver prefs have no effect on external drives.
CHUD is a simple GUI interface that lets you set the interval that each disk is pinged. It will keep the disk spinning but that's not always desireable, especially if the disk tends to run hot.
I used CHUD when I was having an issue with some chained FW disks and it did keep it spinning, although I feared more for the disk than the chain. It didn't really solve my issue, so I found another workaround. Hard disks spin down after about 15 minutes of inactivity for a reason.

Forcing External Drives To Sleep

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