Mac OSX Monterey External Hard Disks Going to Sleep

Hi

Have the same issues here as others, just upgraded from 2019MBP to new maxed out M1 and external thunderbolt drive off to sleep after 30 seconds. Using to run Resolve and every time i hit play which i now have to wait about 20 secs before it wakes up and plays. The only fix i have found is to plug in the drive, wait for it to show up then whilst still connected resart the MBP. For some reason this then keeps it active but as soon as i pull the lead and plug it back in the sleep issue returns. Not end of the world issue but boring as **** when just spent £3600 to upgrade and having issues.

Same exact issue. I literally just updated to Monterey and have been having issues the past few days with my external RAID going to sleep even after unchecking "put disks to sleep"

Thanks for the Amphetamine tip @rbearpark - hopefully Apple solves this sooner than later, not a fan of needing unnecessary software.

Just plug in the drive, wait for it to show up, restart the machine and you're good to go all day long, no additional software needed. Works for me every time.

M1 Max connected via Thunderbolt to a G-Raid.

I am still on Monterey 12.0.1 with my M1 Mac Mini. To further test, I changed my OWC Thunderbay enclosure (4 disks) from Raid being managed by OWCs proprietary software SoftRAID (6.2) to having Apple manage the RAID. The drive still bounced between sleep and wake. I changed the drives to JBOD instead of RAID and fully uninstalled SoftRAID from my Mac to ensure the drivers were not interfering. Still, the drives bounce between sleep and wake. I have a 2nd enclosure from LaCie that is RAID managed by hardware and this drive continues to bounce between sleep and wake. I will update to Monterey 12.2 and see if there is any difference, but from my testing, there continues to be an issue with the way the Mac is managing external HDDs.

Same thing here.

I have an OWC Express 4m2 and a Graid 8tb with thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter and it still doesn't work.

I was convinced that with the new update was one of the first things they fixed instead nothing, they will be busy making optimizations for ipad and iphone for the average user and who cares about professional users.

I'm afraid that amphetamine APP (THAT KEEP DRIVE ALIVE) can crash Softraid XT, I've had to reinstall it 3 times due to an error and crash when loading the control monitor.

Is anyone reading this from the apple team? I would love to hear from a developer or someone who recognizes the problem!!!

I have seen this happen for several years depending on the drive. Some have software that will make the drive sleep if no activity. I always used Keep Drive Spinning V3.0 which works fine. I have now switched to all SSD's and now not an issue. Here is the link for the app: https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31158/keep-drive-spinning

I updated to Monterey 12.2 and have not experienced any difference. I didn't have any issues running Amphetamine with Softraid- but I found Softraid to be extremely buggy in the year+ that I used it. Their (OWC/Softraid) support is very slow to help and not something you can get immediately. I decided to just let macOS manage my RAID and not worry about Softraid being behind each time Apple makes and update. I got tired of OWC pointing the finger at Apple, and Apple would probably point the finger at OWC when it comes to these drive issues. Both my LaCie and OWC drive enclosures are doing the same thing under 12.2 with Softraid uninstalled. Softraid never managed my LaCie enclosure.

It would be great to get some acknowledgment from Apple to know if this is being worked on.

Just found your thread via googling the same issue...

–Monterey 12.2.1 (21D62)

–Mac Mini M1

–G-DRIVE 10TB via direct connection (USB3)

Spins down and comes back all the time...

– Disabled 'Put Hard Disks to sleep whenever possible' didn't help

– Terminal commands such as "sudo pmset -a disksleep 0" etc. didn't help

– "Keep Drive Spinning" App doesn't work

– Used different USB-C cables, nothing changed

Strange thing tho' is that after a restart, it's running for a while, like even an hour, and when I start working with Adobe Bridge and Google Chrome, the disk starts playing this stupid game.

I'll get back if there's any solution....... 🤞🏽

Thanks for weighing in. I find Adobe Lightroom I notice it much more, so maybe Adobe is contributing to some of the issues as it's looking for drives or swap space as we work. I suggest filling out the bug report that I linked earlier in the thread with the specifics you experience.

Thanks for confirming. I've been using Amphetamine as well. I wouldn't say it's a "fix" necessarily, but more of a band-aid for whatever bug is causing the problem. It doesn't work for my JBOD disks and I find my RAID ones keep spinning up and down, but less so when Amphetamine is running.

Just want to throw in my "what the heck Apple" complaint on this thread. Brand new fully spec'd Macbook Pro M1 Max w/ Monterey. 2 G-Raids plugged in via thunderbolt to USB C to thunderbolt dongle and they spool down after 1 min of inactivity and take about 30 seconds of pin-wheel in any program before I can do anything, including finder. So frustrating. Glad to hear amphetamine helps.. going to hop on that.

Just want to throw in my "what the heck Apple" complaint on this thread. Brand new fully spec'd Macbook Pro M1 Max w/ Monterey. 2 G-Raids plugged in via thunderbolt to USB C to thunderbolt dongle and they spool down after 1 min of inactivity and take about 30 seconds of pin-wheel in any program before I can do anything, including finder. So frustrating. Glad to hear amphetamine helps.. going to hop on that.

Same issue here with both a 13" M1 MacBook Pro and a 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro. The workaround I've found is to go into system preferences and check and uncheck at the disk sleep options for both battery and power adapter and then restart. It's super annoying but it works. Apple please fix this! It's been going on for over a year.

Same happening here. M1 Mac mini. Have a RAID plugged in directly to the mac mini. Goes to sleep constantly and causes all my work to lag. I tried the old Keep Drive Spinning app, but that doesn't seem to help. Going to try Ampehtimine next. I hope something works as this is super annoying.