Level 1

62 points

Prevent External Drives from Sleeping

I have a Retina 4K, 21.5-inch 2019 iMac with 3 GHz 6-core Intel Core i-5 just updated to macOS Sonoma 14.1 with 2x USB external HDDs (Seagate ST4000VN 008) formated as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID Partition Map.

They keep going to sleep - apart from it not being good to keep spinning up and spinning down mechanical HDDs, it's really annoying. There's a very noticeable delay when I want to access the drives.

And yes, I have "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" turned off in System Settings.

This seems to be a long standing issue with the macOS with no reliable solution?

I have tried a couple of 3rd party solutions (Amphetamine and Jon Stovell extensions) - not found one so far that is satisfactory.

The only "solution" which I've found is to format the drives as APFS - this stops them sleeping (and generates snapshots) but seems to be generally regarded as not a good thing for HDDs …

I guess it's to do with how the manufacturers (Seagate in this case) manage the drives which it seems is not controllable from the macOS.

Any good reason not to but the drives back to APFS?

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Nov 9, 2023 12:49 AM

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VOGH

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Nov 12, 2023 8:07 AM

Maybe not a good solution, but I can add my successful experience, starting with some older LaCie enclosures with Seagate Disks. There were two problems, possibly related to each other:

1) Disks started to sleep (irrespective of poset parameters and system preferences) and I had to wait quite some time to access the discs afterwards. This seems to be your problem.

2) Disks were unexpectedly ejected from time to time (was described on LaCie website, too).

Now with a new Mac mini 2023 I was so frustrated that I finally bought two new USB-C enclosures (which made the access to the discs faster!) and formatted the discs with APFS. And both problems disappeared!

I did not realize any performance problems with APFS on these old discs (Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 AF with SATA 3.1, 6 Gb/s). And I think the fact that Time Machine decided to use APFS on an erased disc tells us that APFS is OK for HDD today.

I must admit that sometimes I thought that one of the discs still slept, but there was no delay to access the contents. No problems left at a reasonable cost and improved performance.

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21 replies

larry666 Author

Level 1

62 points

Nov 10, 2023 3:44 AM in response to Owl-53

Disconnected iMac from ethernet, so no access to NAS. Stopped CCC from running, removed CCC login items.

External HDDs still going to sleep.

So, is it likely firmware in the Seagate HDDs or Ugreen enclosures is overriding the macOS management?

Thanks,

Owl-53

Level 10

103,327 points

Nov 10, 2023 4:53 AM in response to larry666

larry666 wrote:

Disconnected iMac from ethernet, so no access to NAS. Stopped CCC from running, removed CCC login items.

External HDDs still going to sleep.

So, is it likely firmware in the Seagate HDDs or Ugreen enclosures is overriding the macOS management?

Thanks,

Worth a try to explore this avenue of thought

LucilleX

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2023 12:24 AM in response to larry666

Hi, not sure if this is still an ongoing topic, but I'm facing the same issues with my new Mac Studio (M2 Max). In my case problems with disks going to sleep started after I've updated MacOS to Sonoma, before that I didn't have any issues. When I switched "put hard drives to sleep when possible" off they really didn't go to sleep that day, but when I shut it down and turn it on, despite the setting being disabled they are again going to sleep.

Can't afford myself losing data by formatting disks differently. Any other solutions? Maybe going back to Ventura or Monterey?

Jan 4, 2024 4:01 PM in response to Affilmity

I must add...

Once using the Terminal command above, it appears that if you put your Mac to sleep while the drives are mounted, upon wake the drives spin up and down all over again. Putting the command in Terminal again won't fix it. However, unmounting the drives, doing a restart, and then mounting the drives again appears to restore the no disksleep command. I've had my drives on without any activity from me for about 90 mins and everything is still on.

As well, I now have both my Sabrent 5-drive enclosures connected to my Thunderbolt 3/USB C dock instead of plugged directly to my Mac Studio. I can't confirm whether that makes a difference (as I originally had one connected to the Mac and the other to the dock - at one point the one to the dock was staying on while the other was going to sleep, but at another time both kept going to sleep - so who knows), but perhaps having that constant connection to the dock also helps as a sort of barrier for the Mac disksleep command.

Anyway, as stated, now about 2 hours with me doing nothing related to the mounted drives and everything staying on a stable.

And, PS, since the Sabrent enclosures are 10Gbps and the dock is connected to the Mac at 40Gbps, there isn't any impact on speed even with both going full blast. And 20Gbps still available for other stuff.

larry666 Author

Level 1

62 points

Nov 10, 2023 6:35 AM in response to Owl-53

Trying to find some way of checking this.

Thanks

Dec 27, 2023 8:32 PM in response to larry666

Hi Larry, I have the same problem with a Hard drive enclosure made by Ugreen. Could you share the link in order to download the firmware too?

Thanks!.

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Prevent External Drives from Sleeping