I recently upgraded my hard drive. After upgrading my Macbook will no longer sleep. When the lid is closed or sleep is issued from the Apple Menu it attempts to sleep but the hard drive continues to spin, and the machine seems to wake and attempt to sleep over and over.
One additional note. It may not be the hard drive but rather the RAM I upgraded to. I upgraded to Mushkin 2x2GB (4GB) upgrade. I installed Smart Sleep and I cannot sleep but I can hibernate.
I have a quite similar problem. My MacBook always hibernates. Everytime I open the lid I see this white screen with the loading bar at the bottom. I tried to reset my NVRAM and PRAM but nothing really solved the problem. I bought my MacBook from a reseller who himself upgraded the RAM to 4GB. Can incompatible RAM be the reason for my problem. I also have Kernel Panics sometimes when my MacBook wakes up, which probably is a sign of incompatible RAM...
Mine's broken too. I can only sleep and not hibernate or smart sleep.
It actually gets stuck and never finishes the "sleep" and stays on with a blank
screen. I have to hold the power button down or remove the battery. So it's getting stuck on the "sleeping" end and not on the "waking" end.
I have swapped out the drive with a samsung 500gb and removed the CD drive and
put a 256gb SSD (g.skill titan II) instead. The SSD is the primary drive (boot).
Everything else works great and fast!
I don't care much about the hibernation or smart sleep except I can't swap battery packs without fully shutting down and closing all my documents 😟
I had the same problem on my MacBook after I upgraded my RAM (OWC 4GB upgrade kit) and HD (WD 320GB 5400RPM). It wasn't apparent what the problem was because every test I ran on the system showed everything to be within normal parameters. I've spent the last two days researching every reference to this issue on the internet. I came to the conclusion that if it wasn't a problem inherent in the particular DIMMs I installed then it had to be either user error or faulty Apple hardware.
Of course it was user error. I went back into the system and reseated the DIMMs in their ports. They didn't look askew but when I reseated the bottom one I heard a very distinct click as the arm latches fell into the notches on the PCB. I know I didn't hear that the first time I installed them. I believe that the improper position of the DIMM was causing my system sleep issues.
Conclusion:
Condition - You have the upgraded your MacBook 13.3" Unibody to 4GB from 2GB and then experienced a condition where you put the notebook into sleep mode but the system will no "wake up" and you still hear the fan and HD running. Opening the lid will not do anything, neither will pressing the space bar or clicking your mouse button. The system has to be shut down by holding the power button down for 5 seconds.
Solution - Access the memory DIMMs. Remove them and reseat making sure that you have a solid fit and the securing arm latches click into place. Reassemble, reboot and test for sleep activation and recovery.
