Time Machine drive keeps spinning

My experience is very different from yours. I have eight different Time Machine drives (four are SSD, four are mechanical HDD) used with five different computers. None behave in the way you describe. All eject immediately when ejected, and if Time Machine is in the middle of a backup the backup stops and then the drive ejects, within 20 seconds or so.

With a drive eight years old behaving that way, I would suspect it is malfunctioning or failing and would replace it. All drives fail eventually, it is a matter of when not if. You need to have confidence in your backups.

You can download DriveDx and test the drive's physical condition with that utility. This is different from running Disk Utility, which only checks the file system but does not check the physical condition of the drive.

Check the Time Machine menu and see if it says it's "preparing" or "cleaning up". Alot of users had a similar problem in that it nefer4 seemed to finish "preparing", me included.

Since I did not have any files on the TM drive that weren't on my drive being backed up I erased the TM drive and started over. Haven't had a problem since.

If you end up having to get a new drive look at the drives offered by OWC (MacSales.com): OWC Mercury Elite Pro. OWC is the premier 3rd party Mac hardware provider. My 6TB Time Machine drive is 5 years old and runs beautifully. I'm just a very satisfied user of OWC drives.

Cartoonguy wrote:

I'm guessing it's correct that this drive simply does not work with SMART, but then I also have a brand new SSD drive plugged in and that also will not work with SMART, so wonder why that is.

Is the SMART thing in any way related to the drive case, or could I just swap the HDD and use the very nice Lacie Neil Poulton designed case? Or is that too old as well?

Drives typically wear out with increased use. If enough time goes by, the drive electronics may eventually degrade from exposure to humidity, atmosphere, etc. Typically electronic contacts and solder joints wear out faster from thermal cycles and/or mechanical wear (for mechanical drives).

Not sure why you seem perplexed that replacing an eight year old drive is something you might need to do. These drives are basically like consumables and they all wear out over time. Just like batteries, automobile tires, light bulbs, etc.

For the SAT SMART driver to work with a drive, the driver requires a SAT (SCSI ATA Translation) capable external drive enclosure. If your external drives don't have this, it won't be able to obtain the SMART parameters and assess drive health.

External drives do require the kernel extension for their SMART status to be sensed and reported. You also have to make the appropriate input in the Security Preferences Pane as indicated in the screenshot you provided for it to work. There is something similar for TechTool Pro, which can also get hardware assessment for an external drive with the kernel extension installed.

I wouldn't use the same enclosure if you are replacing the drive. The enclosure might be causing the problem. The noisy spinning down and then ramping up again is very abnormal and indicative of something wrong with the drive or its enclosure. If it's 8 years old you have gotten way more than the average mileage from both. The failure rates for commercial hard drives rise dramatically after 5 years.

Cartoonguy wrote:

Sounds like maybe 5400 is okay, for backup, but better to use a powered drive. Having said that, you say you have used WD portable drives successfully, so maybe they are fine, but powered seems like a more logical choice for a desktop.

Separately, I cannot get DriveDX or Disk Drill to read the disk. This despite enabling SMART and following all the instructions. Just doesn't work for me, which is too bad. Wonder why it doesn't "just work".

What you are looking for is on a site like Amazon with a large customer base, a product with thousands or even tens of thousands of customer ratings that are 4.5 stars or more. You're looking to give yourself the highest likelihood of a good experience. One person can say anecdotally "I like this or that hard drive make" or "I don't like this or that hard drive make" or "mine failed after 1 month" but when you have thousands or tens of thousands of users indicating that a product is reliable, that's the better likelihood that your purchase of that model will be reliable also.

For a desktop, a AC powered drive should be fine and is probably more robust, but I must say I have used bus powered drives on both desktops and laptops.

Older drives (yours is eight years old, that's quite old for a hard drive) often aren't set up for SMART monitoring even with that extension (kext), so in those cases you can't access the sensors straightforwardly yourself. Nowadays drives are low cost mass produced commodities and like batteries or tires, they do wear out. I would simply replace the drive.

dialabrain wrote:

I have an older WD drive on one of my Macs used for Time Machine that does the same thing. I just assume it's because of out-of-date firmware on the drive.

FWIW, I fixed the problem yesterday. The drive had been spinning for much longer than it should and was also rather noisy ever since Big Sur was released. I erased the drive as HFS+ and let Monterey convert it to APFS. It's been fine ever since. YRMV.

I will not use an old 8 years Timemachine back-up to my mac!

Use your Extern Time machine back-up in two or three years,not any, longer!

8 years is is so extreme,is my opinion!

purchase a new one for your Time machine back-up!

Seagate or Toshiba is an option!

A couple things…

I have an older WD drive on one of my Macs used for Time Machine that does the same thing. I just assume it's because of out-of-date firmware on the drive.

You can't eject a Time Machine drive without disabling Time Machine first in System Preferences > Time Machine.

7200 rpm is faster than 5400 rpm. This might or might not make a difference to you for Time Machine.

Power supply powered: simpler interface, possibly more reliable, higher performance, less portable due to power supply, cabling, etc.

Bus-powered: draws power from Mac so additional failure modes, more portable, less clutter, can be more ruggedized

I use only drives with 3 or 5 year (or more) warranties. To me that indicates that the manufacturer has more faith in the longevity of the device. In a small photography business, we have been using about 40 WD portable bus-powered external drives (most 5400 rpm; some SSD) over a number of years with excellent results (2 or 3 failures over 15 years). We always keep multiple Time Machine drives for each Mac and important files are backed up in duplicate "clones."

The OWC drives that Old Toad recommends are top of the line, high performance and have a reputation for reliability; they are also 7200 rpm.

Cartoonguy wrote:

Only question is whether or not an 8 year old drive sitting in a drawer most of the time is the same thing as an 8 year old drive which has been hooked up and used regularly. I imagine it's not the same thing as the wear from an unused mechanical drive would be much less.

It might be worth a try with the drive that has been sitting unused. Manufacturers do a lot of life testing by operating them continuously, sometimes subjecting them to harsh temperature swings to represent accelerated life testing. I doubt they also have spent as much effort to understand whether the devices can also sit many years unused. It certainly wouldn't hurt to try the old unused drive. But I personally would never trust it for something as important as a backup. Computers do fail and then all you have is your backup.

For me, the most important thing for a backup drive is reliability (speed is also of some importance).

I don't think the WD Elements is the best choice because it comes with only a 1-year warranty, it is WD's low end product. On the other hand, the higher end WD Passport models typically come with 3-year (or longer) warranties. And some drives by WD and Lacie come with 5 year warranties, as do some other makers' drives.

I only purchase drives with at least 3 year warranties, preferably 5 years. I don't think I have ever made a warranty claim, as the cost of shipping and such and the hassle of keeping track of all the purchase information (we have used more than three dozen of these external drives for our small business) makes it not a good use of time. We have had two such drives fail after many years of use out of more than three dozen mostly WD 3-yr warranty drives (we do have some 5-yr warranty units, none have failed so far). But I do feel that a manufacturer offering a 3-yr or 5-yr warranty is telling us that that product will last longer than one with a 1-yr warranty.

I don't know how to assess the reliability of a drive that is installed in an older Neil Poulton drive enclosure. An elegant enclosure is nice to have, but ultimately I think the reliability is what matters the most. For instance, does the enclosure have a cooling fan? Heat cycles are what often determine the lifespan of these devices, and mechanical components wearing out. I noticed that some of the Neil Poulton Lacie products come with only a 2-year warranty, but some come with 5-year warranties. So the manufacturer is standing behind some of these more than others. I think once you start taking drives out of and inserting them into enclosures, you are basically on your own.

OWC has a reputation for making excellent and reliable enclosures.

It may not help but reformatting the drive is cheaper than replacing it.

Cartoonguy wrote:

I actually called Lacie and they said the drive is failing, but I am suspicious that it's not true. Did you update the firmware to fix it?

Actually I never bothered to check to see if there was a firmware update. What I can say is this particular WD drive has been doing the same thing since Big Sur. I might check for a firmware update later today. I'll post back if I learn anything.