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Level 1

15 points

External drives constantly sleeping - why?

Hi –

I have a 2021 MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.1. For storage I use a Seagate Backup Plus HDD (https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/products/external-hard-drives/backup-plus-hub/).

When I plug the drive in via USB, it spins up and is usable. However, in around 30 seconds without access, the drive will go into a sleep mode and spin down. Any access to Finder after that means the drive has to spin up again, which causes a really annoying lag.

I've tried all sorts of power settings – but nothing will keep the drive on, so I just resort to using it and then unplugging it. I did wonder if the drive is formatted incorrectly – it is set to ExFAT, so could that be causing a problem with compatibility or function? I do not have another external HDD, so I can test is there's a difference.

Any ideas much appreciated.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.1

Posted on Jan 31, 2023 3:13 AM

Best reply

MartinR

Level 6

19,441 points

Posted on Jan 31, 2023 6:05 AM

Check System Settings > Energy Saver. Disable "Put hard disks to sleep when possible."

There have been other reports about this drive going to sleep in short periods of time. If it were me, and the drive is still under warranty, I'd return it and get a different drive.

Changing the format would not be expected to have any effect on sleep. However, this drive comes in 2 flavors, one preformatted NTFS for Windows, the other preformatted MacOS Extended (Journaled) for Mac. The user guide doesn't even suggest ExFAT unless you dig down into optional formatting & partitioning. If you are using this exclusively on Mac, I suggest reformatting it as MacOS Extended (Journaled) - of course this will erase everything on the disk, so make sure you have a backup.

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External drives constantly sleeping - why?

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