In Yosemite: External Hard Drives Won't Spin Down

Since installing Yosemite, my external (and perhaps internal) drives won't spin down in energy saver mode: 'Put hard drives to sleep when possible.' I'm using Seagate Barracuda 2TB internal drives in external Voyager Q drive bays. They seem to be getting a little too warm, I can also feel them spinning.
Thanks!
Steve

Thanks for those diagnostics & remedies. Those are good to know. Performed all of them but the problem persisted. I tried swapping out different drives and discovered that it was one particular Seagate drive that wasn't spinning down. So that was the culprit. Going to check out the Seagate discussions here or on Seagate and see what can be done, probably nothing.
Thanks much!
Steve

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External hard drive won't shut down after switch from OS10.5 to OS10.4.11

i recently chanded my OS from 10.5 to 10.4.11 (as a programme i want to use is not compatible with leopard), but since i have done this my external hard-drive won't shut down automatically when i shut down my mac. i have to switch it off at the plug instead.
can anyone suggest how i can get it to do this again?
i'm a little concerned that i'm damaging the external drive by turning it off manually all the time..
thanks

Some hard drives shut off with shutdown, some don't. Sometimes hard drives that did shut off with one system will not do the same with a different system. My hard drives which did shut off, prior to 10.5 now stay on.
This is not really a problem as all hard drives spin down after 10- 20 minutes when not in use, whether your computer is on or off. Leaving the drive on is fine, shutting it off manually is fine.
-mj
[email protected]

External Hard Drive won't shut down

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MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.9)

You need to provide more information about the drive. Is it bus powered or AC powered? If it's bus powered, you should probably contact LaCie support and ask them. If it's AC powered, then naturally you'd need to shut it off separtely.

I just installed OS X Yosemite and now my WD My Book Live external hard drive won't re-connect. My Safari keeps kicking out and giving me error message after error message and my computer is really slow. How do I resolve? Can I uninstall this ?

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USB2.0 PCI cards that use the NEC chipset seem to give the least amount of problems for Mac users.
OWC have a few different ones for sale.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5 000&N=7057&Ntt=USB2**0**cards
Do you also connect the external USB drive to the AC power as well while you use it ?
Sometimes USB external drive problems are resolved simply by plugging them into the mains power and trying again.
Stewie
Message was edited by: stewiesno1

External Hard Drive Won't Mount- Need to recover files

Hello Everyone,
I am hoping that one of you fine mac experts may be able to assist ~
Problem: External Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB external hard drive
won't mount on desktop=ie: no access to my important files.. Please Help!
Details:
External seagate freeagent 500 GB Desktop USB HD ( only 2 months old)
(using for document / file backup-not as a startup disc)
on my Mac G3 350 MZ Blue & White Tower /768 ram/ running OSX 10.1.5 & OS9.2~
~
Problem: Started using the external 500 GB HD 2 months ago -with no problems-until this morning. Tried to double click to open it to access files
and got the "beach ball of death" and needed to restart.
My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
trying different a/c plugs/ different USB ports , ran disk utility..called
seagate -not much help . Seagate said to try the HD on another mac-which I did-
a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
and when click "mount" same two messages keep showing:
message 1: "a disk attempting to mount as unknown has failed verification or has failed to
mount.please use disk utility to check the disk"
~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
restart:" you have inserted a disk containg no volumes that mac osx
can read to use unreadable volumes,click initialize to continue with the disk inserted ,click continue"
~
( I really need access to these files- and do not want to re-initialize the HD!!)
I ran Disk Utility /first aid "verify & repair , the following info came up:
Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
still comes up when re-running disk utility...Hard drive would still not
mount on desktop-even after restarting .
~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
appreciated. I have tried to call seagate several times in the last several hours-
1st time-they disconnected me after being on hold 10 minutes-2nd call
I was put on hold for 40 minutes ..Finally spoke to someone ( they are not mac users or mac experts!)and he said I would need to send it to Seagate's Data Recovery-... for a fee of course!
~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
the hard drive- I heard about Disk Warrior-should I use that and if so
what version?
Thank you very much!
L

Will zapping the PRAM be of any use in getting the external to mount on the desktop?
Your external Hard drive is already recognized. But it cannot be mounted on the desktop due to its directory damage. You can certainly Zap the PRAM, and it will not hurt anything, but I am skeptical that it will change the situation.
Do you think the Disk Warrior 4.0 cd will even work on my G3 350MHZ running Mac OS 10.1.5?
If you boot from the CD and run it from the CD, absolutely yes. If you attempt to INSTALL it from a download or a CD, probably not.
Have you ever used Disc Warrior and is using it complicated?
I own and use Disk Warrior. You select the drive to be rebuilt, it builds a proposed new directory from the information and file fragments available.
When complete, it will provide a list of problems encountered, tell you what files have been placed in the "Rescued Items" folder, and allow you too look at your drive using the proposed new directory. Your only decision is whether the new directory seems to be an improvement over the old \[in your case, hopelessly corrupted] directory. You then tell it whether to replace the old directory with the proposed new directory, or to abandon its work and leave your Hard Drive unchanged.
Is there a good chance that the ext HD will still have my files on it- or do you think from what I've described that they are gone ?
From what you have described, your files are very likely to still be there. Sometimes in a situation like this, a handful of files cannot be recovered.
My other thought was to take the external HD there and have them try to recover the files.
Make sure you completely understand the costs involved. File recovery using a service like DriveSavers can run into many hundreds of dollars. They are prepared to disassemble your drive in a clean room and replace controller boards and read/write heads to achieve success. Your drive has serious, but not fatal, Directory damage. The Hardware, and most of your files, are likely just fine.

External hard drive won't mount, even after disk repair.

My Toshiba external hard drive won't mount on my MacBook Pro 10.8.5. I can see it in my disk repair, and when I repair, "the partition map appears to be ok." But I can't access the icon to be able to open the hard drive contents on my desktop. Help!

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

After installing snow leopard my external hard drive won't show up on screen or backup

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External hard drive won't unmount for disk utility.

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Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
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Many Thanks

The stats look fine. Try the DFU Restore method shown in Corrupt iPod classic. It may pay to disable any anti-virus software and use the staged transfer method to reload data, assuming you get that far.
tt2

External hard drive does not shut down

Hello, When my mini mac goes to sleep my samsung external hard drive does not shut down or dismount properly. when i wake computer i have a error message stating improperly ejected hard drive. It also does not reconize HD until I disconnect and reconnet??? PLEASE HELP Thank you

My Mini was doing the same thing until I reset the PRAM. With four external drives. They would stop inadvertently with an "improperly ejected" error. Granted two of the drives went bad (6 and 7 years old) but a brand spanking new Seagate and a 3 year old Hitachi drive doing the same. Haven't seen the error since resetting the PRAM.
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New external hard drive won't show up in disk utilities...

I have a 2010 macbook pro 13" and just bought a 1tb toshiba canvio external hard drive.
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Does anyone know what this is and how to fix it?

So far all MacBook users have been able to use this drive as a USB 2.0 by using a USB 2.0 cable with a micro usb connector (same as smartphones, Kindle, Nook) on one end. Connect the micro connector to the opening on the left side of the USB 3.0 connector on the Canvio - if you look closely you'll see that side is exactly like the USB 2.0 micro receptacle. That's all you need to connect as a USB 2.0 - the other connections are for USB 3.0 which no Apple system has yet (Dec 2011). Connect the other end (a standard USB type A plug) to your MacBook and it will work. If you want to use it for Time Machine, you'll have to reformat it. None of the supplied software will work with Mac You can read more at this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3510032?start=0&tstart=0

HELP! External hard drive won't show up in finder!

Last night, I was updating my macbook (from August 2008, still runs on leopard) and it needed to restart. I forgot to eject my LaCie Porsche 1tb external hard drive first and, when it rebooted, I got the error of death (aka "disk was not ejected..."). When connected to the USB port, the drive lights up, I can hear it spinning, but it won't show up in finder and I can't see it in Disk Utility to repair it (after the first error of death, the computer wouldn't even acknowledge that I had the drive plugged in). I've tried plugging it into the different USB ports and even on a different macbook, but no luck in getting the computer to recognize it long enough to use Disk Utility or DiskWarrior. Any tips on how I can get my macbook to read the drive again?

If the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility when connected to two or more different computers, then the problem is with the hard drive, it is broken. Get a new one.

External Hard Drive won't stop sleeping

This is really frustrating me. I have my settings unchecked to allow hard disk to sleep, also my computer is set to never sleep. However whenever I try to access my external drive, I always have to wait several seconds for it to spin up. It's as if OSX is ignoring my preferences and just putting it to sleep still. I don't understand. It's really annoying to have to deal with the lag of drive spin-up all the time. What do I have to do to get my external hard drive to NEVER sleep, so it's always immediately accessible? It's a Samsung Story 1.5gb external USB, not that it should make any difference...

jamesdstark2 wrote:
This is really frustrating me. I have my settings unchecked to allow hard disk to sleep
Some external HDs respond to that setting, some don't. Some won't respond unless you disable the built-in sleep (or "spin down") software. As Baltwo says, check with the maker.

WD 3.0 external hard drive won't mount to Mac

I've had this Western Digital 3.0 external for some time and now it won't mount. I'm running Yosemite on my iMac. Full disclosure, I did drop the drive a day before it stopped being recognized on the Mac but it wasn't a hard drop and the external drive was running just fine immediately after the drop. I've seen some posts on here talking about WD external drives not working after updating to Mavericks but I didn't have that problem.
I've zapped the PRAM.
I've made sure it wasn't the cable - I have another 3.0 drive that mounted just fine using that same cable.
This WD external drive is self powered so it's not a power source issue.
I've tried updating the Firmware but since the drive isn't mounting, that did no good.
The USB port on the Mac is fine - plugged in another drive and other devices in that same port and they are all recognized and working fine.
Just to make sure, I tried using another port. No different result.
I tried the Option key on a restart to get to Disk Utilities but it's not seen there.
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About ready to try this possible solution as described in this discussion:
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
Soooooooo . . . help would be appreciated!

Hello
Ihad EXACTLY the same thing happen to my WD hard drive... MINUS the dropping.
Was organising my iTunes and iPhoto library, kept crashing, over and over again, then the last time, i restarted and it won't mount.
Except not only is the WD hard drive not mounting, after the crash and restart of itunes etc neither is my Time Machine hard drive which is connected via a LAN cable.
Exactly the same scenario, all the ports work, all the cables are fine etc.
Just went BOOM - not happy and stopped working.
All my photos and music are on this one drive.
Did you manage to fix your issue?

In Yosemite: External Hard Drives Won't Spin Down

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