Hard drive keeps waking up when Macbook Air is sleeping

Hmm... that's odd.

It might be worthwhile looking into the command-line tool pmset (Power Management Settings). To use this tool, open Terminal, located in Applications -> Utilities.

You can read the man[ual] page for pmset via these steps:

1. Open Terminal.
2. At the top of the screen, select Help, then search for pmset.
3. Select the man page entry that appears.

When using pmset, you may have to run the command as the superuser (the hidden root user). The best way to do this is to prefix "sudo" before your desired command. You'll be asked to enter your admin password; Terminal won't show any characters as you type your password.

Example, to set the disk sleep timer to 5 minutes: sudo pmset -a disksleep 5

Thanks for the clarification!

The Battery section inside System Preferences has a hidden option: Put hard disks to sleep when possible. This option only appears when an external hard drive is connected to your Mac.

To make sure that this option is enabled:

1. Connect your external hard drive.
2. Open System Preferences -> Battery -> Battery/Power Adapter -> Put hard disks to sleep when possible.

Hi thatjonathan,

Are you referring to an external hard drive connected to your M1 MacBook Air? The internal drive inside your Mac is a silent SSD.

Or, does the screen turn on unexpectedly during sleep?