Preventing External USB's from sleeping

I have 9 external USB HD's connected to my 24" iMac, mostly vis hubs. They constantly go to sleep and when I try to download a file via Firefox or Safari, there's an extended wait while the browser tries to make a connection and the drive wakes up. I know they're not high speed enterprise class drives that are meant to always be on but the wait is annoying. Is there a way I can prevent some or all of them from going to sleep?

Depends on the HDs. Some, like Western Digital ones, have proprietary spin-down crapola software embedded within that can't be turned off. Talk to the vendors of those HDs.

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External USB Ejecting When Sleeping

Hi,
I have noticed recently that when I wake my MBP up from sleep I see that my USB drive has been ejected. I am unsure why this is. The drive is partitioned into 2 volumes and one of them is my Time Machine drive. I have seen a few posts that this might be the reason, but I cannot find a solution.
I have tried SleepWatcher to try and unmount, and then remount the drive when it sleeps and wakes back up but keep running into issues with it; couldn't get the scripts to run, permission issues, but that is besides the point.
Anyway has anyone else run into this, and found a solution?
Thanks
Patrick

Hi,
Thanks, I should have mentioned that. It is powered by an AC unit and is connected through a USB hub that is also AC powered.
USB Drive: LaCie 1 TB
USB Hub: Belkin 7 port (5 on back, 2 on top)
I am going to try a few things and see if I can isolate whether the hub is the issue or not. It will take some time because I cannot put the machine to sleep and wake it right back-up to cause the error. I will connect the drive directly and let the machine sleep for a few hours and see if the issue happens again.
Thanks,
Patrick

Preventing MacBook Air 2012 from sleeping on closing lid

I'm running Mountain Lion now and still there is no option to adjust settings on Lid Closing. I intend to prevent my Mac from sleeping after I close the lid. All the settings made in Energy Saver become redundant if my Mac sleeping as soon as I close the lid.
This might seem a minor issue, but is very irksome. Had expected it on 10.8....
APPLE, please fix this long-standing issue!!

You are not talking to Apple here, we are just other users like yourself. Use the following link -
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookair.html
Do not expect a reply, however.
Best of luck.

AEBS prevents my USB drive from spinning down

Hi all,
I thought I would share my concerns about connecting USB external drive with AirPort Extreme. I've seen several post here talking about that issue, but they didn't solve my problem.
Otherwise great product, AirPort Extreme n prevents my WD MyBook 500GB disk from spinning down when not in use. I bought that particular disc, because of its ability to go to sleep when not accessed for a period of time. It works great when connected to my MacBook via FW400 or USB 2.0, but when I use it via AiPort Disk utility and connect to AEBS the disk will not spin down, keep running and getting hot. I am concerned with that fact, because it consumes more energy and will shorten disc life (yes, it is not a server graded disc, as most of USB ones, and it was not designed to spin continously).
I read some posts about Spotlight indexing the drive, but that is not true because of three facts:
- when connected via USB 2.0 or FW400 the disc spins down.
- when I left it for two hours it was still spinning - Spotlight should have finished indexing by then right?
- even if I eject network drives from the Desktop, breaking the connection with my MB it is still spinning.
There seems to be a problem with AE itself. AEBS seem to keep the disc busy all the time or the disc thinks that's the situation.
From what I've read this is not MyBook only case. People with Lacie, Maxtor and other brands are having the same problem.
At this point I have no solution to this. I disconnected the drive and access it via FW400 only. That's a shame, because Apple advertises AirPort Extreme using USB drive connectivity as a major selling point. I think that situation is unacceptable. A disc spinning 24/7 is asking for trouble.
If someone has a solution to that problem, please share it with the forum readers, if not we will have to wait for Apple to fix this. I hope someone from Apple is reading this.
MacBook C2D Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Otherwise great product, AirPort Extreme n prevents
my WD MyBook 500GB disk from spinning down when not
in use. I bought that particular disc, because of its
ability to go to sleep when not accessed for a period
of time.
Other posts indicate you can solve this by privatizing the drive in Spotlight's preferences. I haven't tried this because I like the drive indexed--it is a shared data drive after all.
I turn the drive off manually when I'm not using it. Unfortunately, the Airport doesn't recognize the drive (or printers that I've turned off, for that matter) when I turn it back on. The only solution I've found is to restart the Airport. Any ideas on this problem?

How to stop external USB HD from unmounting?

I have an external harddisk (a Samsung 400GB drive with one FAT32 and one HFS+ partition in a Mapower MAP-AL31-US case) which normally does what it should. The drive is connected via a powered USB hub.
However, when the drive has not been accessed for circa fifteen minutes, it will unmount/"eject" - even when the Mac itself does not go to Standby mode. The result is a warning and a lengthy check once the volume is "re-discovered"/mounted by Mac OS. I had no data loss so far, but I really would like to stop this.
Can someone tell me if (and where) this behavior can be changed from OS X, or is this a low-level HD/HD controller issue?
I used to know how to fix such problems, but obviously this is the kind of know-how you forget when you don't need it for years ...
Thanks in advance.

Hello Zlig,
thank you. I'll uncheck - as you suggested - "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" and see if this helps.
But (this may be a dumb question) doesn't this also mean that when the MacBook goes to sleep (e.g. when I close the display or when the "Sleep" time has been reached) that the machine's internal drive will not be put to sleep either and keep on spinning? I certainly wouldn't want this when I carry the machine around ...

Can I Stop An External FireWire HD From Sleeping?

I Have An External FireWire Hard Drive (Maxtor 75 GIG. Model # FWRA080LE001) And I Was Wondering If I Could Stop It From Going To Sleep? When It Does Go To Sleep, And I Click On It To Open It, It Doesn't Respond, And It Locks Up My Desktop, And I Have To Reboot It By Holding Down The Power Button.

Found it out!

Prevent certain USB devices from receiving power

I need to prevent devices such as cellphones from receiving power from a USB port while at the same time allowing for other devices that we use in the enterprise to function correctly. I have been unsuccessful in my research. I would like to have this
all done on the local clients so that I can add it into the image for the enterprise. Any help is appreciated.

Hi JustIT28,
As far as I know Windows don’t have the USB device type detection ability, may you can ask your computer hardware vendor for the further help, or you can Bing
the USB security software keywords then choose some third party USB security management software.
I’m glad to be of help to you!
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Connecting to Mac's external USB harddrive from Windows XP

Hi
I would like to connect to my external hardrive, that is connected to my Mac from Windows XP using apple share
From Windows I can see the Macs internal hardrive but not the external one
From the Mac -of course- I can see its external drive
Is there a way to share that drive so Windows can see it through the Mac?
Thanks for help
Gyula from Belgium
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Use SharePoints from Hornware.com

Shared External HDD -- Awake from Sleep mode?

Greetings and Happy New Year fellow Mac users,
I have a question for anyone who knows about sharing external drives across a network.
Currently, I have an external Macpower M9-MiniPod hooked up to my MacMini via Firewire. The computer is then hooked up to the home network via the ethernet port.
In order to share out the external HDD, I had to use Hornware's SharePoints(v3.5.4) -- this allowed my Macbook to connect to the drive via Airport wireless, providing easy access to the music and videos stored on that drive.
However, I have now noticed that when I try to connect to the drive when the MacMini has been left for a while, it comes up with an error basically saying that the drive is 'currently unavailable. I took it to mean that it was because the external HDD (and the MacMini) had gone into Sleep mode.
So my question is: how can I set up the MacMini (or external drive) to be 'awakened' when another computer is trying to access the shared drive? I used to be able to do this regularly with my PC's shared drives, even when the PC was asleep.
Thanks in advance for your responses!
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thanks for the info...
I initially tried the Wake550 program, which worked well the first time, then caused me grief subsequently. I couldn't really tell what it was doing, as it would say it was waking the computer, but then when I tried to connect to the external drive, there was still an error.
I got confused by the WakeOnLAN Perl script... no idea about how to run it or activate it. Was stumped for quite a while until I discovered that there was an easy application version on MacUpdate. Not only did it work straight out, but it also has a WIDGET version that is a simple point and click awakening!
Highly recommended. Thanks for your help nonetheless!

UserEventAgent preventing external hard drive from being ejected?

I'm trying to eject an external hard drive (not used with Time Machine) but keep getting the "can't eject because one or more programs is using the drive" and asks me if I'd like to force eject.
I've quit every application, emptied the trash, restarted, verified/repaired the disk, made sure it wasn't indexing in Spotlight (there was no progress bar so I'm assuming it's not), relaunched Finder/TotalFinder, no luck. Attempting to repair or erase the drive results in an error because os x can't unmount the disk.
I ran this terminal code after a google search of this problem and this is the result:
unknown60334b106529:~ will$ lsof +fg +D /Volumes/"Toshiba External" | grep -v EVO
lsof: WARNING: can't opendir(/Volumes/Toshiba External/.Trashes): Permission denied
lsof: WARNING: can't opendir(/Volumes/Toshiba External/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/AC3334E1-B614-478D-8156-C951F780D844): Permission denied
lsof: WARNING: can't opendir(/Volumes/Toshiba External/.DocumentRevisions-V100): Permission denied
COMMAND   PID     USER   FD   TYPE FILE-FLAG DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
UserEvent 729 willryan   64r   DIR         R    1,9     1292    2 /Volumes/Toshiba External
UserEvent 729 willryan   65r   DIR         R    1,9     1292    2 /Volumes/Toshiba External
Any ideas? I don't know if this is a premature sign of the drive failing and luckily I was able to back up all my files to a different drive, but I'm stumped.

I just tried it with my mac mini, same problem as above. However, when I tried it with my iMac, I was able to eject it without any issue. Weird...

Preventing Digital Audio Out from "Sleeping"?

I'm using the mid 2010 Mac Mini and digital audio out.
My receiver is showing the loss of digital audio signal when the mini hasn't played a sound for awhile and then comes back when audio is played.
I loose about 1 second of audio though when this happens which is bad for quick sounds. Subsequent sounds play fine until it "sleeps" again.
In Windows it keeps the digital signal live at all times which is what I want in Snow.
Is this possible?

You should only experience a delay when you switch to a new source of sound. Such as first starting playback in itunes, or first start Pandora, or just starting to watch a video clip.
This is because OSX typically only outputs a digital bitstream when there is an actual audio bitstream source currently "playing."
I regularly see my Denon receiver indicate a loss of the audio bitstream and then indicate when it starts up again. I have not experienced a problem because of this.
I suspect your particular receiver is slow to respond to new bitstreams. I have two suggestions to help mitigate this:
First, it might help to lock your receiver to the optical audio input (for that particular source selection). Since the receiver is likely simultaneously monitoring the HDMI, coaxial and optical inputs for a new bitstream, this could cause a delay in its reaction to a new audio stream.
Also check the receiver's manual and see if there are adjustments for its digital audio behavior. Disable any buffers or processing effects or "enhancements."

[SOLVED] Problem with external USB drive started yesterday

My system freezes for about 65 seconds at the login screen. After 65 seconds, I can login and everything is normal afterwards.
I discovered that I can eliminate the freeze by disconnecting the external USB drive from the PC. Here are the error messages from kernel.log when the drive is connected:
Oct 15 23:10:14 localhost kernel: [ 17.035091] usb 1-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -110
Oct 15 23:10:29 localhost kernel: [ 32.155955] usb 1-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -110
Oct 15 23:10:29 localhost kernel: [ 32.325394] usb 1-1.3: new high speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
Oct 15 23:10:31 localhost kernel: [ 34.045126] MediaState is connected
There is supposed to be a kernel boot option (irqpoll) to prevent this from occurring. However, that option seems to no longer work for kernels after 2.6.39. If I try using it with Arch, the system will not boot, saying all the CPU's failed.
I also don't understand why this just started happening yesterday, as the USB drive has been connected to the PC longer than I've been using Arch. Also, my kernel has not been updated since I installed Arch on Oct 8.
Does anyone know another fix or workaround for this problem?
Thanks,
Tim
Last edited by ratcheer (2011-10-17 01:30:08)

Problem solved
I feel stupid, but I also feel better. I turned off the PC, disconnected the power from the USB drive for about 15 seconds, reconnected the power, rebooted, removed the irqpoll kernel option, and Ubuntu started, perfectly. I need to learn that the USB drive just goes freaky sometimes and remember to do this. But, this is only the second time I've had to do this in months of use.
Tim

Disappearing thunar when selecting external USB drives

My thunar crashes/disappears whenever a select any external USB device from the list on the left. However, when I type in the directory to Go > Open... then it appears just fine. Anyone else experiencing this issue or have any idea how to prevent it from happening?

Yup have the same. Haven't bothered to solve it though as it is mounted on the expected location (/media/LABEL). Guess it has to do with gvfs.
Perhaps the wiki suggestions might help you
Last edited by FarmerF (2011-07-21 12:32:40)

Send an USB harddrive to sleep

Is there any possibility to send an external USB harddrvie to sleep or standby during working with Tiger?
Thanks
Idefix

Is there any possibility to send an external USB harddrvie to sleep or standby during working with Tiger?
Thanks
Idefix

How to stop my Time Machine external hard drive preventing iMac from sleeping?

I have a late 2012 iMac, and have discovered that sometimes (I haven't noticed a pattern of when it doesn/doesn't happen) the computer will immediately wake up after I set it to Sleep (Apple Menu>Sleep). Through elimination I have found that it is the the USB 3.0 external hard drive I use as a Time Machine back-up that is the culprit; unplugging it then allows the computer to sleep. If I unplug it, then plug it back in later on, this normally solves the problem for a while, but not forever. This same Hard Drive didn't cause the wake problem on my previous '08 iMac.
A big issue is that when the machine immediately wakes from sleep, the display stays off (until I move the mouse) - this is good from a power saving point of view, but means I don't know if/when the machine is immediately waking from sleep (I have to listen to the fan when setting it to Sleep mode to hear if it has actually woken back up).
I've searched the forums, but can't find another poster with the same problem as myself. Can anyone advise a course for me to pursue to prevent this from happening?
Thanks. Jamie

Hi Frank. Nope, I'm still having the same symptoms; the plugged in external drive (TIme Machine) will wake the machine up a couple of seconds after it winding down when put to into sleep mode. Ejecting the drive and then sleeping the machine works. After plugging it in again to do a Time machine backup, it will allow the computer to sleep soundly for the first few sessions (eg a few days of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, etc), but then it will then suddenly start preventing it from sleeping again after a while.
It seems I'm fortunate in my case that the display stays dark (or off?) when the machine has been woken from sleep, but this was actually preventing me from knowing the machine wasn't in fact asleep for quite some time; I only eventually cottoned on because there wasn't any delay when 'waking' my machine (which there normally is). I would then have to carefully listen to the spinning fans to know if in fact it had gone to sleep or not.
So, to summarise, unfortunately no, I haven't solved this yet. If anyone else has a solution, please let us know?
Also, I've noticed occasionally after waking that there is a relatively quiet 'crackle' sound (kind of electrical sounding) from the bottom-right area of the machine. This goes on every so often for about 30mins. I see this is also an issue with other people's late 2012 iMacs, but I've not seen if anyone has a solution to it?

Preventing External USB's from sleeping

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