External HDD keeps spinning down and ejecting

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Level 1

83 points

External HDD keeps spinning down and ejecting

Upgraded from a 2013 iMac to a Mac Studio and since then, my drives are acting in a way they never did before. First of all, after the Mac has gone to sleep, when I wake it up, I find that drives have ejected and I get the warning message that it was not properly ejected, but it also has reconnected, so it's just a bunch of warnings. This mainly happens with my Time Machine drive, which is a Lacie USB 3 drive, but it has happened with other connected drives, including an SSD.

The other issue is that when I access the Finder or go to a save dialogue, the HDD drive needs to spin up, so I get the beachball for about 10 seconds. I have "do not allow hard drives to sleep" selected in preferences, but that doesn't seem to matter. It really slows things down as I have to wait for the beachball multiple times as I work.

As I say, this is all new since using my Mac Studio. I am running Monterey 12.6.1. Does anyone know why this is happening or how to fix it? Is it a Monterey thing? An Apple Silicon thing?

Mac Studio

Posted on Nov 6, 2022 4:21 PM

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Answer 1

allen_31

Level 2

319 points

Nov 7, 2022 1:58 AM in response to Cartoonguy

To resolve the hard drive auto eject issue, tweak the power management settings of Mac, as shown here:

· Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

· On Terminal, type “pmset –g | grep disksleep” and hit Return.

· Check the value of disksleep. If it is low, provide a significant number.

· Type “sudo pmset –a disksleep #” (here, replace # with a suitable number) and hit Return.

· Provide the admin password when prompted.

· Check the changed sleep value using the “pmset –g | grep disksleep” command.

The above solution will fix the drive auto-eject problem. Now, use the hard drive to save and access data as usual.

Hope it helps!!

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Answer 2

Cartoonguy Author

Level 1

83 points

Dec 18, 2022 9:52 PM in response to Cartoonguy

Discovered the extraordinary issue which has caused so much headache. It seems the Sabrent SSD enclosure needed a firmware upgrade as ejecting and corruption was a known issue. I believe the issue on the SSD was impacting all the drives connected on the same bus because after fixing the SSD, the problems with the other drives have not yet reappeared.

Never heard of needing a firmware update for a drive enclosure. Nothing in the Sabrent manual about firmware updates and worst of all, you can't even do them on a Mac, so had to find a friend with a Windows PC. Did the firmware upgrade and so far, all these issues have disappeared. I'm happy, but it makes me crazy!! Never going to buy Sabrent again.

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Answer 3

Cartoonguy Author

Level 1

83 points

Nov 7, 2022 3:10 PM in response to allen_31

Yes, I read elsewhere that it's a fix and I tried it. It seems to be helping, but drives still do spin down. To be more specific, this is the value I read should be input.

Change the pmset to its highest value

sudo pmset -a disksleep 1410065408
press Enter

Wondering if telling the Mac Studio to never sleep uses a lot of power if it's just sitting there, awake but not doing anything.

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External HDD keeps spinning down and ejecting

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