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External hard drive never rests

I have two external solid state hard drives attached to my new M3 iMac, one for Time Machine, and the other to house music ripped from purchased CDs. The Time Machine Drive goes on and off on a regular basis, as expected, but the music drive is always lit, even when the Apple Music app is not in use. I moved these drives from my previous iMac, and the new machine allowed me to continue Time Machine backups from the point where they left off on the previous iMac, but the behavior of the drive housing the music files is unfamiliar to me. Is there a Sonoma 14.1.1 setting I can use to tell the computer to allow the disk to rest when it's not in use?

iMac 24″, macOS 14.1

Posted on Nov 19, 2023 12:39 PM

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Posted on Nov 19, 2023 3:50 PM

Solid state drives don't need to rest, unlike their mechanical counterparts, since there are no moving parts to wear out. Like your computer, the ssd can remain powered on all the time. In fact, many users report issues with some ssd devices failing to remount properly after the mac awakes from sleep, and the common response to fix that issue is to use System Settings to disable the Mac from sleep.


Some external enclosures and drive adapter cables may never appear to power down at all. This is not uncommon behavior.

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Question marked as Best reply

Nov 19, 2023 3:50 PM in response to steveod1

Solid state drives don't need to rest, unlike their mechanical counterparts, since there are no moving parts to wear out. Like your computer, the ssd can remain powered on all the time. In fact, many users report issues with some ssd devices failing to remount properly after the mac awakes from sleep, and the common response to fix that issue is to use System Settings to disable the Mac from sleep.


Some external enclosures and drive adapter cables may never appear to power down at all. This is not uncommon behavior.

External hard drive never rests

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