I have a 2021 Mac Mini and I bought a 5TB Seagate external HDD for some extra storage. It has worked fine, and I leave the drive plugged in, letting it power up and down as the computer does; however, sometimes when I power down my Mac Mini, my hard drive makes a single, audible click noise as it powers off. I think it’s just the head parking, but I wanted some expert confirmation as I have had drives die on me in the past.
Does the external drive click if you eject it and let it spin down before shutting down the Mac mini?
If it only clicks when the Mac Mini shuts down, then one might suspect that the Mac mini is in the process of reading/writing to the external drive when it shuts down.
OK, then it sounds like the Mac mini is accessing something on the external drive, up until the time the power cuts off at the USB port.
Which leads us to a few more question.
What type of USB cable and what port is the drive plugged into.?
What type of files and/or backups are on the external drive?
Is the external drive excluded from Spotlight Indexing?
Yes that is what I would do, if I was shutting down my Mac mini at the end of each day.
The other option, is to just let your display(s) turn off and leave the Mac Mini on.
No. If I eject the HDD first, there is no clicking sound.
I do have my iPhotos Library on the drive. In iPhotos, it’s constantly downloading new photos from iCloud. So that’s probably why it’s writing down to the last second.
All I need to know is if it would be safer to eject the drive before shutting down my Mac Mini.
It's just the hard drive doing it's thing.
Mac Mini External HDD Click When Powering Down
