jobalo

Q: 10.8.5 puts drives to sleep... forever

Today I updated two systems to 10.8.5:  A Mac Pro (Early 2009) and a Mac Mini Server (Late 2012).

 

Prior to the update I had "Put hard drives to sleep when possible" unchecked in Energy Saver, since I use both systems constantly--and drive sleep just results in lower performance, and more wear-and-tear on the drives.

 

After 10.8.5, drives will sleep (despite the setting), then never wake up.  The drives themselves may spin up, but the OS does not see them.  E.g., Finder will give a spinning beach ball when attempting to view the drive, any app with a file open on such a drive will lock up, Terminal will hang on ls of the drive, etc.

 

This is happening on internal and external drives on both systems.

 

The only way to get the drives back is to reboot.

 

 

Given the severity of this issue, I am restoring my systems from Time Machine backups to OS X 10.8.4.

MAC MINI SERVER (LATE 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Sep 12, 2013 7:17 PM

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Q: 10.8.5 puts drives to sleep... forever

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  • by lkrupp,

    lkrupp lkrupp Sep 20, 2013 3:32 PM in response to orchetect
    Level 5 (4,250 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 20, 2013 3:32 PM in response to orchetect

    In another thread users are reporting that setting the display sleep option to never seems to resolve the hard drive sleep problem.

  • by mctape,

    mctape mctape Sep 20, 2013 3:42 PM in response to lkrupp
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Sep 20, 2013 3:42 PM in response to lkrupp

    also in this thread.

  • by orchetect,

    orchetect orchetect Sep 20, 2013 4:20 PM in response to lkrupp
    Level 1 (11 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 20, 2013 4:20 PM in response to lkrupp

    Thank you, I will give that a try.

  • by stumcgregor,

    stumcgregor stumcgregor Sep 24, 2013 2:07 PM in response to Jason Haines
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 24, 2013 2:07 PM in response to Jason Haines

    could also run the following launchd:

     

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

    <plist version="1.0">

    <dict>

              <key>KeepAlive</key>

              <false/>

              <key>Label</key>

              <string>nz.co.definitive.stopdisksleep</string>

              <key>ProgramArguments</key>

              <array>

                        <string>date</string>

                        <string>&gt;</string>

                        <string>            SCRIPT            </string>

              </array>

              <key>StartInterval</key>

              <integer>60</integer>

    </dict>

    </plist>

     

     

    using the following script:

    #!/bin/bash

    date > /Volumes/RAID/technician/stopsleep.txt

  • by stumcgregor,

    stumcgregor stumcgregor Sep 24, 2013 2:09 PM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 24, 2013 2:09 PM in response to jobalo

    This has also wreaked havoc with my OD — as in poked it completely. I need to restore a TM backup to get back to original.

     

     

  • by randerse10,

    randerse10 randerse10 Sep 24, 2013 10:28 PM in response to lkrupp
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 24, 2013 10:28 PM in response to lkrupp

    lkrupp wrote:

     

    In another thread users are reporting that setting the display sleep option to never seems to resolve the hard drive sleep problem.

    This seems to have worked for my setup. Not a permanent solution though.

     

    The disk in slot one is my boot drive. I have the disks in slot 2 and 3 partitioned into a raid 0 and a raid 1. I have a disk in the fourth slot, and another disk shoved into the unused DVD drive bay (a hack).

     

     

    10.8.5 (12f37)

    early 2008 Mac Pro 2x2.8Ghz quad-core Xeon

    10 GB 667 Mhz DDR2

  • by allinspite,

    allinspite allinspite Sep 24, 2013 11:49 PM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 24, 2013 11:49 PM in response to jobalo

    Same issue here. Internal drives all spinning down after I upgraded to 10.8.5. Hopefully there's a solution from Apple shortly, as this is a huge bug.

  • by Twansparant,

    Twansparant Twansparant Sep 25, 2013 5:38 AM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 25, 2013 5:38 AM in response to jobalo

    Same problem here too, a very annoying one I might add....

    I tried that Keep Drive Spinning script, but that didn't seem to work for me. Also tried setting the display sleep setting to never and at first that did seam to solve the problem for me, but only for a while.

     

    It's only affecting my Firewire 800 external drive and not my other drives. It doesn't even spin up, it's just dead. When I try to access it via finder it just freezes and I have to relaunch finder. In order to access my external drive again, I have to completely reboot my Mac Mini. And that's ridiculous!

  • by MarkAllan,

    MarkAllan MarkAllan Sep 26, 2013 1:43 AM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Sep 26, 2013 1:43 AM in response to jobalo

    Yep, same problem here.  iMac 27" (circa 2010) with factory-fitted SSD and internal factory-fitted 1TB hard drive.  The internal HD constantly spins down even though disk sleep is set to "off".  It does spin up again when needed, but the delay is infuriating, and will cause wear eventually.

  • by lkrupp,

    lkrupp lkrupp Sep 26, 2013 5:28 AM in response to MarkAllan
    Level 5 (4,250 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2013 5:28 AM in response to MarkAllan
  • by randerse10,

    randerse10 randerse10 Sep 26, 2013 6:31 AM in response to lkrupp
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 26, 2013 6:31 AM in response to lkrupp

    I never got the warnings, and the disks remained mounted even while spun down.

  • by HenryAZ,

    HenryAZ HenryAZ Sep 26, 2013 10:05 AM in response to randerse10
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 26, 2013 10:05 AM in response to randerse10

    randerse10 wrote:

     

    I never got the warnings, and the disks remained mounted even while spun down.

     

    My drives remain mounted after spinning down, also.  There is a 2-4 second delay when accessing them after they spin down.  Carbon Copy Cloner is able to get their attention for scheduled jobs, and I can expand them in Finder (after the delays).  I prefer them to spin all the time.  They should at least follow the setting so I can decide when/if they spin down.  I am looking forward to the supplemental update, hopefully fixing this issue.

  • by pfjellman,

    pfjellman pfjellman Sep 26, 2013 12:08 PM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2013 12:08 PM in response to jobalo

    I'm having the same issue. Been using a Mediasonic ProBox 4 bay USB 3.0 enclosure with zero issues for over a year. Updated to 10.8.5 about 2 weeks ago, and now I'm having CONSTANT issues with this enclosure.

     

    The drives will spin down, and sometimes spin back up, other times will just beachball my whole Finder. Cannot even reboot my system unless I physically unplug the USB cable from my MacBook Air.

     

    In addition, once this spin down procedure happens, write access to 1, 2, 3 or sometimes all 4 of those drives is disabled. I get constant -50 errors when trying to write to the drive or use my computer. I used to be able to unmount and remount the drive, but now I have to restart my whole computer because it just locks up.

     

    I'm very nervous that this bug is causing physical damage to my drives, as the issue seems to be getting worse. This is really horrilbe! All of my media, Time Machine backups, 20,000+ photos and home movies, are all on these drives… if I lose this data, I will be heart broken.

     

    Hoping for a fast fix…

     

    P.S. This seems to happen especially when I come in and my display is asleep (I leave my Mac awake 24/7). When I wake up the display, usually the -50 error comes up. I've just set my display to never sleep, and will see if this temporarily fixes the issue.

     

    I will report back if the error goes away or persists…

  • by pfjellman,

    pfjellman pfjellman Sep 27, 2013 10:40 AM in response to pfjellman
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2013 10:40 AM in response to pfjellman

    UPDATE — setting my display to never sleep has fixed this problem. Went a full 24 hours with no drive spindown or -50 errors. Apple is working on a 10.8.5 supplemental update to fix this and a few other issues. I'm hoping it will be available soon.

     

    In the meantime, I can have my monitor stay on and just lower the brightness all the way down when I'm not using it. This isn't a "solution", just a temporary fix until the update comes out.

  • by Leite.Andre,

    Leite.Andre Leite.Andre Sep 27, 2013 2:13 PM in response to jobalo
    Level 1 (12 points)
    Safari
    Sep 27, 2013 2:13 PM in response to jobalo

    I have a macbook pro retina display 15", mid 2012, 16 GB RAM memory and a ssd with 256 GB (from apple). I need to use an external drive, 1 TB (Iomega prestige portable drive), through USB 3, single partiton with Mac OS Extended Journaled format. Part of my "home" files are placed on this external drive, through a symlink on my "home" folder:

     

    /Users/my_user/my_user_ext -> /Volumes/IOMEGA1TB/Users/my_user_ext

     

    All my iTunes library, documents and pictures relies on the external drive, hence the drive is plugged almost 24x7.After 10.8.5 update, I'm facing the same issues described in so many threads on this and other forums.

     

    In my case, the drive doesn't unmount at all. It shows in finder, as it were there, but if I try to go inside any folder, it freezes finder. If I try to "ls -al" a folder inside my external drive, through terminal, it freezes. I can't eject it, because, in disk utility, it fails to unmount with the message: << Eject Failed   The disk "OEM Ext Hard Disk Media" could not be unmounted. Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk. >>. Checking " lsof | grep <external volume name> ", there is not a single file on the drive being used/accessed by any process. If I try to reboot the computer it simply hangs on the grey screen, for hours if I let it waiting. To reboot it either I force the power off through power button or I manually unplug the external hard drive's usb 3 cable, making it shutdown "normally". If I also unplug the usb 3 cord from the system, without trying to reboot it, it makes finder and terminal return back to normality. Although it will show me << The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off. >> At this point if I plug it back it will work fine till the next sleep.

     

    While I was trying to solve this issue, I have already:

    - checked and double checked the file system and hard drive (all ok);

    - bought and installed a usb 3.0 powered hub;

    - bought a new usb 3.0 micro A/B cable for my external hard drive;

    - disconnected all my usb 2.0 flash men keys that were plugged (a lexar 8GB and a kingston 16 GB).

     

    Nothing seemed to make it work properly.

     

    Being reluctant to adopt the workaround described by many, to set the display to never sleep, it seems to be the only one available and I will have to adopt it till apple releases, what we are guessing to be a "possible fix", the OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update.

     

    It's really disappointing for a very expensive computer (2370,00 EUR by the time I bought it on October 2012). Not to mention the issues I had with two apple's Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters which forced me to focus on usb 3 external drives. The first one was replaced on the first month and the second one which I used exporadically, stopped working a few weeks ago (less than a year using it).

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