Mac OSX Monterey External Hard Disks Going to Sleep

Not sure if this is related or not, but as mentioned I also have this issue, and on Friday my G-Raid disappeared from the computer and I got the dreaded red G logo light. Had it setup raid 0 so lost 10TB of video footage. Never had an issue with this drive until I started using it with my Macbook Pro M1 Max a few days prior. I had used Amphetamine for 24 hours for the first time right up until the drive crashed. I don't think they are related, but also can't rule it out.

Backup your content!!! Lesson learned.

Hi Everyone,

I want to reiterate that I have a workaround that does work --- Go to System Preference/Battery/Power Adapter -- check "Put hard disk to sleep...." and then uncheck it. Do the same for System Preference/Battery/Battery. Then Restart. This consistently works for me as annoying as it is.

Throwing my complaint into the bucket as well. Been going back and fourth with OWC for the past two weeks to no avail. Glad I found this thread as I figured it was likely a Monterey issue. I can repeat the problem down to the 60th second in finder with my flex8 RAID 5 array, as I hear the disks power down files cannot be quickly previewed, after about 10 seconds everything reconnects. So Apples whole "third party" argument is void. Got Amphetamine running, will use as a band-aid until this get's patched.

I've done today the last monterey update, nothing about the bug fix of the external disks that go in standby. now let's put our souls in peace, apple is not interested in solving this bug. We have to continue with third party apps like amphetamine and similar. Honestly i don't like having the hard disk icons dancing from icon image to folder all the time, it gives me the idea of instability (using amphetamine with the option to keep the disks awake every 10 seconds).

Such a shame

Same thing here.

MacBook Pro 16 M1Pro - connected two lacie drives through daisy chain - all settings at system preferences are selected correctly, today I made the latest update of Monterey.

This is serious. Apple.

Apple this is serious. There is almost no one in this world who's using these computers without using external drives. Expensive external drives with expensive data inside.

Apple this is serious.

It is not just a bug. It is a huge problem with huge risks.

I'd like to add a big fat "me too" to this. I just upgraded from a 2011 iMac (running High Sierra) to a 2020 Mac Mini M1. (running Monterey) On the old iMac I had four external HDDs connected with a USB 2 hub. Yeah, slow ancient setup. But it always worked. Never had the problem described here. On the Mac Mini I have the same HDDs connected with a Sabrent powered 4-port USB 3.0 hub (connected to the USB port on the Mini). Everything was fine until the Mini went to sleep for the first time. Once the Mini woke up, the HDDs started spinning down after 30-60 seconds of inactivity. A restart of the Mini seems to fix the problem, until it sleeps and wakes up and the the problem starts again.

The Energy Saver "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" checkbox doesn't do anything. The only solution is to keep restarting the Mini every time it wakes up from sleep, or Amphetamine's "Drive Alive" feature seems to be working well (I just installed it today, but so far so good). Or I suppose I could just never let the Mini go to sleep, but that's hardly a good solution.

If it matters, all four HDDs are WD: Two Elements and two My Books. I don't use the WD software.

There are way too many people having this same problem for it to be blamed on a third party. This seems to be very much a Monterey problem.

I'm using adobe lightroom as well. I have my catalog on one master drive (a WD elements), and two backups......All three of the drives do the same sleep/wake behavior without dismounting.....This has got to be an operating system issue......Western digital claims that they haven't heard of this problem, but the descriptions on here sound very similar to the issues that I am having which makes me think it is monterey not knowing how to play with certain drives...

For reference I have a macbook m1max with 24coregpu 64gb ram 1tb drive

I'm currently doing tests on my old macbook air 2015 intel with monterey (i know for certain im having issues with my macbook m1max with monterey), hooking my external drives to lightroom to observe behavior.....i have a feeling this might be a monterey and/or m1 specific issue, and might not be necessarily affecting intel macs with monterey. will report back in a bit.

So I ran tests with 3 external wd element desktop drives on both my intel macbook air 2015 with monterey & macbook pro 2021 M1 Max with monterey, and the behavior of powering up and down continously seems to be only happening with the M1 Max laptop.....Anyone do similar testing with older intel and new m1 computers? Right now im thinking this is a combination of a Monterey/m1 issue.

I JUST got my Mac Studio, and went through the setup this weekend. My OWC raid does the same thing. I have run this raid on my 2013 Mac Pro for two years without this problem. Matter of fact, my 2013 Mac Pro has a Terramaster 5 bay array on it, and it does not do this. I think it is safe to say that the problem is with the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, in Monterey, and definitely not third party software, or what the IT people commonly refer to as "a user problem". This thread is going on 5 months now, and Apple hasn't done anything about it (that we know of). We shouldn't have to run another third party software to address what Apple says is caused by a third party software.

Frustrating issue. My company prevents me from administrating my own computer, but I have the setting "unchecked" to "Put Hard Drives to sleep..", yet every minute, the hard drives go to sleep.

Almost unusable, and I can't expect my company to make me an admin to prevent this change.

And yes, my computer is also an M1 Max MacBook Pro.

I have the same setup: A new Mac Studio Ultra, and a G-Drive Pro (spinning rust).

The G-Drive is configured as an encrypted Time Machine volume, therefore macOS formatted it as APFS encrypted.

I'd expect the disk to spin down, then come up for hourly backups. However, I notice it spinning down and back up quite frequently. Sometimes it feels like every 5 or 10 minutes.

As others said, whenever this happens any operation that is iterating over the available disks freezes.

Disabling the System Preferences option to "Put drives to sleep if possible" doesn't seem to make any difference.

I tried to use Amphetamine but since the volume is not writeable by my user I can't select it.

I tried moving the G-Drive from using a USB-C cable direct to the Mac Studio, to using a USB Type-A port on a CalDigit TS3+ TB3 dock.

The issue seems to be persisting. Spin down/up/down/up.

This is going to kill my drive.

Probaby unrelated, but my 12TB G-Drive thunderbolt RAID fully died while plugged into my new macbook pro in latest OSX one day after turning on amphetamine. Lost 11TB of video footage and work from the last 2 years.

I just discovered that through the magic of APFS volumes, I can create a writeable volume that shares the drive with Time Machine (the Time Machine volume isn't writeable, even as root).

This should let me try out Amphetamine. We will see.