Level 1

32 points

Mac OSX Monterey External Hard Disks Going to Sleep

Hey all, I'm currently using a M1 MBA and recently updated to Monterey. The issue I'm facing now is my external hard disk dock is going to sleep after a minute of inactivity, even when I have unchecked the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" option in the power options.

This usually gets fixed by restarting the MBA, but every time I put the mac to sleep for awhile (operating in clamshell mode and connected to external display via Caldigit TS3+) and wake it back up, the issue pops up again.

When I head into terminal and execute "pmset -g", it shows that my disk sleep option is set to 0.

The external disk drive dock is plugged directly into my Caldigit TS3+, and the TS3+ is plugged into a thunderbolt port on the MBA.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Dec 5, 2021 2:23 AM

Top-ranking reply

sdschramm

Level 3

525 points

Posted on Oct 21, 2022 5:10 PM

This is still not fixed with macOS 12.6. Even with "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled, and pmset showing a value of 0 for "disksleep", my drive is still spinning down, and up, and down every few minutes. It seems to be caused by putting the Mac to sleep. I'm able to reproduce the issue and workaround the issue via the following:

How to reproduce:

Boot your Mac with the external hard drive connected.
Allow 10-15 minutes for mdstores process to chill out as it likes to index the drive and perform maintenance when it sees it connected. Wait even longer if this hard drive is also your Time Machine backup destination. When the drive stops reading/writing then proceed.
Sleep your Mac. Wait 10-15 minutes.
Wake you Mac. Wait 10-15 minutes.
The hard drive will now start randomly spinning down when macOS thinks it's not needed and then 1-2 minutes later spin it back up again even though you aren't trying to access the drive.
Step 5 will repeat until you reboot the Mac.

How to workaround/avoid the issue:

Boot your Mac with the external hard drive connected.
Go to System Preferences > Battery > Power Adapter and check the box for "Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off.
When you are finished using your Mac, go to the Apple Menu and choose Lock Screen. Do not shut the lid.
When you want to use your Mac again, press any key and log in.
The external hard drive will remain active and will not spin down unless the system sleeps. Then it will get stuck in the loop mentioned in step 5 above until your Mac is rebooted.

If anyone could test and validate my findings, please respond with your results. If this is accurate and reproducible by others, then I think we have a good shot at trying to get this fixed by Apple. For those of us with Apple Care, opening a case and pointing the engineer to this thread would eliminate a lot of back and forth troubleshooting since most of the work is already done.

Thanks,

-Scott

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146 replies

Serghios

Level 1

12 points

Feb 15, 2022 8:55 AM in response to JLJ225

done on a couple of occasions.

Mar 14, 2022 2:13 PM in response to AbeKislevitz

Oh geez! Thank you for chiming in @AbeKislevitz

My boss would kill me if that happened. We do have all of it backed up to the cloud, but still that would be a huge headache.

Mar 14, 2022 2:26 PM in response to loganrun

@loganrun I will try this tomorrow. Thanks!

Mar 21, 2022 7:21 PM in response to AbeKislevitz

Same problem here!

Fully maxed out Macbook Pro M1 Max with Monterey 12.2.

External hard drive keeps going to sleep after less than 1 minute of inactivity.

Please fix this as soon as possible Apple!

mrhoni

Level 1

48 points

Apr 26, 2022 1:51 PM in response to saofrenzy

Same issue here. I'm using Sandisk G drive Pro and it falls asleep. I do have Amphetamine so will try that drive alive solution for now. I just upgraded to Mac Studio.

CM@C99

Level 1

0 points

Apr 27, 2022 11:23 AM in response to CM@C99

Sorry, I missed your previous post about it not working. This has been a nightmare.

mrhoni

Level 1

48 points

Apr 27, 2022 11:23 AM in response to CM@C99

Amphetamine didn’t work for me.

Ryan0751

Level 1

79 points

Apr 27, 2022 12:01 PM in response to Ryan0751

Well nope, Amphetamine is still not working. I know it's running as I can see the file it's writing to the disk, but I'm still hearing spin down/spin up, over and over again.

mrhoni

Level 1

48 points

Apr 27, 2022 12:16 PM in response to Ryan0751

I just reported to the developer that Amphetamine Disk Alive does not seem to work in Monterey/M1 Macs.

Ryan0751

Level 1

79 points

Jun 2, 2022 3:04 PM in response to sdschramm

I opened a case using my developer account but haven’t seen any movement on it.

mrhoni

Level 1

48 points

Jun 3, 2022 7:58 AM in response to ku4hx

I sent an email to Tim Cook and included a link to this discussion.

Klahane

Level 1

33 points

Jul 23, 2022 3:50 PM in response to Klahane

macOS 12.5 definitely did not solve this problem for me.

I've had 8 instances of drives spontaneously unmounting since completing the installation the morning of 7/20/2022.

skivvie

Level 1

5 points

Jul 25, 2022 1:45 PM in response to Klahane

Big 'ol me too. External LaCie Thunderbolt to on 16" M1 Max MBP. Driving me bonkers spin up spin down spin up spin down, and causing delays in file dialogue boxes. UGH.

Ryan0751

Level 1

79 points

Jul 31, 2022 9:40 AM in response to Wurlitzer1015

I don’t think replacing your hardware is going to do anything.

I see the same problem on both my Apple Silicon machines.

Aug 9, 2022 4:11 PM in response to Klahane

Right. It seems that this thread is simultaneously discussing two different issues: one is mount/unmount problem and the other is a disk sleep problem, which was my problem.

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Mac OSX Monterey External Hard Disks Going to Sleep