Mac OSX Monterey External Hard Disks Going to Sleep

Mac Mini M1 - same problem !

• The external hard-drives go to sleep (LaCie d2 Pro) as expected.
• When I use an app (PDF Expert, Nikon Capture NX-D, ...) Monterey tries to wake up the external disk, even though everything I do is on my internal 2TB Macintosh SSD. I am not saving to the external disk and still the Mac wakes it up, which results in a beachball from 2 to 10 seconds.

Totally not acceptable.

• The workaround with Amphetamine is also not satisfying, as it spins my external disks all the time, even when I do not use them for hours.

Apple must fix this:

• The "sleep" system setting for external disks needs to have a time setting
• The external hard drives must stay in sleep, when they are not needed. The OS has to be intelligent enough to know. Just using an app or opening the "Save" dialog in an app should not try to wake up the external hard-drive as long as everything is happening on the internal SSD.
• There needs to be a more simple way to activate and deactivate external harddrives than the horrible "Disk Utility" App.
• And by the way: The "Disk Utility" app needs a design overhaul from zero. It is the most user unfriendly app in OSX.

Macbook Air 2022 and OS12 Monterey. I also have this spin down problem.

-Using an external 3 hard drive connected to a USB 3 hub and apple usb c to usb adapter.

-sleep settings are correct

-issue occurs after a whole or after mac has slept. does not usually occur shortly after a reboot. thais has me in the habit of rebooting more, whereas with old mac would sleep all the time

-when it occurs it will spin down a lot, maybe every few minutes. haven’t measured it.

-tried amphetamine which works, but that’s not the point, something else isn’t working.

-have used same usb hub and hard drive for many years with 2015 macbook pro.

amphetamine works fine on my m1 mac with a wd platter drive that has the same spin up down bug.

Just a general question ... have any of you given Apple feedback on this?

That may well be the only way it gets corrected ... the more reports the better.

See this article...

https://www.sir-apfelot.de/en/mac-sleep-disks-24071/

I have this issue too with an external hard drive that is connected directly to my Mac mini, M1, running Monterey. Previously, this external drive performed just fine. I have my power settings set to prevent disks from going to sleep. I checked with the hardware/software manufacturer of the device (OWC) and they are seeing the same issues in their testing. My hard drive enclosure is using HDDs, not SSDs, so the spin up and spin down is very noticeable. I was running a spreadsheet off this external drive today and the drive kept spinning down, causing the waiting "beachball" every time I wanted to make even a small change in the spreadsheet. This issue is causing significant performance issues with multiple operations during the day. I think there's a bug with Monterey.

Same here! Incredibly frustrating. I have just found a fix however, thanks to a member on another forum on the same topic so thought I'd share here too.

There's a free app on the app store called Amphetamine. Download that, go into the preferences>Drive Alive, make sure your HDD is plugged in and check the box. It's been working for me all morning.

Hope the issue gets fixed soon but this works for now!

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.