User profile for user: Chris Winkler1
Chris Winkler1 Author
User level: Level 2
220 points

External USB Hard drive constantly spinning down and up

I keep all data on an external HDD and I keep hearing my external USB drive spinning up and down all day and its quite annoying besides wasting time. 2023 Mac Studio with M2 chip and turned off spin down when possible.


Others are reporting this on other boards, is anyone else having this issue? Apple support chat says to upgrade, running 13.5, or restart in safety mode to see if it happens there. Never had this issue before and they said reach out to HDD manufacturer, though the hard drive works just fine. usually when opening or closing docs & folders.


Any help is greatly appreciated.



Mac Studio, macOS 13.5

Posted on Jan 26, 2024 12:26 PM

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User profile for user: Chris Winkler1
Chris Winkler1 Author
User level: Level 2
220 points

Posted on Jan 31, 2024 10:26 AM

I figured out the cause of the delay on the external drives. Running CopyPaste Pro, which gives me tons of clipboards & such, not the 1x with apple. Well their new version is such a resource hog, like when I try to use the drop down menu, it takes 5 seconds or so to access. I told them of this and with my frustration on constantly waiting for my drive to do something, I figured I would quit and see if that is it, and bingo! It is, so I’ll only use it for the few times I really need it and ordered the SSD drive for back up also!!. After it’s loaded with only my docs I use on a regular basis, and archiving the others, I’ll see if it still is causing delays.

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User profile for user: Chris Winkler1
Chris Winkler1 Author
User level: Level 2
220 points

Jan 31, 2024 10:26 AM in response to Chris Winkler1

I figured out the cause of the delay on the external drives. Running CopyPaste Pro, which gives me tons of clipboards & such, not the 1x with apple. Well their new version is such a resource hog, like when I try to use the drop down menu, it takes 5 seconds or so to access. I told them of this and with my frustration on constantly waiting for my drive to do something, I figured I would quit and see if that is it, and bingo! It is, so I’ll only use it for the few times I really need it and ordered the SSD drive for back up also!!. After it’s loaded with only my docs I use on a regular basis, and archiving the others, I’ll see if it still is causing delays.

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User profile for user: benekk
benekk
User level: Level 1
88 points

Jan 31, 2024 1:43 AM in response to Chris Winkler1

This may or may not be related … but I experienced the same thing on my M1 Studio Ultra, it was something I noticed immediately after I bought and set up the Mac. It would happen after I put the Mac into sleep mode and woke it up again. It just seemed like it never functioned the same after being in sleep mode and then woken up again – as opposed to a fresh restart. The settings in System Prefs regarding putting the hard drives to sleep made no difference. The hard drives would be working fine after a fresh startup, but then after putting the Mac into sleep mode and then waking, the hard drives would remain asleep. If I needed to access data on the drive then it would begin to spin up which naturally creates a pause whilst you wait for it, but then the disk would immediately spin down again. When the 'put disks to sleep whenever possible' setting is enabled in system prefs, then the disk would still remain awake for 10 minutes or so after being accessed. Basically I've always felt that there's something fundamentally flawed with my M1 Studio Ultra's power management.


Anyway, my workaround was to replace my spinning HDDs for SSDs and I never put the Mac into Sleep mode anymore, I just leave it on 24/7 and put the displays to sleep when I'm not using it with the Shift+Ctrl+Eject command.

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User profile for user: CodingInRain
CodingInRain
User level: Level 1
32 points

Jan 31, 2024 1:47 AM in response to Chris Winkler1

Hi, these are the ways I can think of. I recommend the 4th way:

  1. Disable disk sleep settings: You can try disabling the disk sleep settings on your Mac. To do this, go to System Preferences > Energy Saver and uncheck the box next to “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” .
  2. Delete power management files: You can try deleting the power management files on your Mac. To do this, go to Finder > Library > Preferences and delete the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and com.apple.AutoWake.plist files .
  3. Quit apps that keep writing to the drive: If you have any apps that are constantly writing to the external hard drive, try quitting them to see if it resolves the issue .
  4. Use Terminal to disable disk sleep for all states: You can use Terminal to disable disk sleep for all states. Open Terminal and type the following command: sudo pmset -a disksleep 0 .


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External USB Hard drive constantly spinning down and up

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