Q: 7.6 firmware causing USB disc spin up/down?

Jon G, see the second post by "goligo" on November 19th, which says:

"Downgraded to 7.5.2 again. It's very easy, just open Airport Utility, chose "Base Station" from the menu and then "Upload firmware...". The configuration is preserved."

I followed that and it worked very well.  Repost if you need additional info.

Thanks much. This worked well (Upload Firmware gives you all the recent versions to pick from) and I have successfully reverted back to 7.5.2.

Using an USB disk with my Airport Extreme Is surely a humbling experience. In retrospect it's been a two steps forward, one step back process. I've used It for a couple of years now and it either works well or not at all. With firmware 7.6 my USB disk dies and fails to load again.

I restart the Airport and reconnect the disk but it dies again after an hour. There's been problems like this every second firmware update. So 7.5.2 worked well and now I'm going back to it too.

Same issue here:  USB disk spins up then immediately back down again every 2 minutes.  Logs from my iMac and the Airport Extreme show this type of info:

From iMac:

Dec  5 00:09:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Dec  5 00:09:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/ALSTECH_HD', from 'afp_0W7ryC1EuCWu00iuKR0Pyetl-1.2d000003', not responding

Dec  5 00:09:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

Dec  5 00:09:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Dec  5 00:09:07 MacMike kernel[0]: Primary Reconnect succeeded /Volumes/ALSTECH_HD

Dec  5 00:11:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Dec  5 00:11:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/ALSTECH_HD', from 'afp_0W7ryC1EuCWu00iuKR0Pyetl-1.2d000003', not responding

Dec  5 00:11:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

Dec  5 00:11:07 MacMike KernelEventAgent[42]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Dec  5 00:11:07 MacMike kernel[0]: Primary Reconnect succeeded /Volumes/ALSTECH_HD

From Airport Extreme:

Dec 05 00:09:07          Severity:5          AFP login OK from Michael Spencer@192.168.2.100.

Dec 05 00:09:07          Severity:5          AFP session from Michael Spencer@192.168.2.100 closing.

Dec 05 00:11:07          Severity:5          AFP login OK from Michael Spencer@192.168.2.100.

Dec 05 00:11:07          Severity:5          AFP session from Michael Spencer@192.168.2.100 closing.

This all repeats every two minutes forever.  Same on another iMac in the house.  It keeps the Macs from sleeping as well.  Once I manually unmount the drive from the iMacs, problem stops.

Will try the firmware downgrade.

Has anyone tried the new 7.6.1 firmware?

I updated mine the other day, and as soon as I did i noticed my disks spinning up every few minutes. It seems the problem is still there.

Yep, same problem with 7.6.1

I need this update because of iCloud access to my disk but I' about to downgrade...

This supposed resolution did NOT work for me. 

It took me a while to notice we had an issue because our back up drive and airport sit way off in an office closet.  The last update I performed was 7.6.1.  Someone had asked if that fixed the no-spin-down issue, and I can confirm - it does NOT fix the issue.

So, I downgraded to 7.5.2 - as others reported it worked for them.  I can report - this has NOT resolved the "no-spin" down for us.  Our drive, attached to our airport extreme base station does NOT spin down.  And although our LaCie drive is one that is confirmed it's able to spin down, it actually never spins down.

I don't know what if anything different anyone has done... besides downgrading their airport - but I sure would like to know what anyone has done differently to get their drives to spin down.

-B

Berry, if your disk does not spin down at all, you have a different issue than described in this thread. The issue that was introduced with 7.6 is that disks do first spin down as expected, but then spin up and down again every two minutes.

Goligo -

It's BArry with an A - not a fruit, and have been a Mac owner/user for over 25 years, and consulting for the last 13 years.

Contrary to your opinion - my issue is actually is very relivant within this topic.  I did mention we had this issue - maybe not in detail, but I would presume someone posting here would have the issue, as I did.

I did howeer, not mention we previously never had an issue of our hard drive not spinning down until sometime after 7.6 or 7.6.1.   It is in fact - essentially the same issue as shown that this resolution solved our problem. 

I was going to update/edit my post this morning but will have to post another comment.  After doulble checking on everything after the downgrade mentioned herein - our issue with the drive not spinning down has been resolved.

So Goligo - if you need - you can add to the list.... that drives, specifically not spinning down at all - to your list of issues being resolved with this method of downgrading.

Same issue, spin up/down every 2 minutes with firmware 7.6.1:

Downgrading is not an option, need iCloud support. This needs to be fixed!

This is more than just frustrating (and loud), I had to buy a new power supply for my Lacie because the constant start stop cycling killed it.

The downgrade worked to fix the cycling issue, but obviously throws away the 7.6 functionality.

Come on Apple -- please fix this.

BuckyThreadkiller wrote:

 

This is more than just frustrating (and loud), I had to buy a new power supply for my Lacie because the constant start stop cycling killed it.

 

The downgrade worked to fix the cycling issue, but obviously throws away the 7.6 functionality.

 

Come on Apple -- please fix this.

It would be nice!  If the function / ability was there before, certainly Apple can fix it in a revised version of 7.6.  Alas... using time machine in this manner and set up isn't supported by Apple, so I doubt they'll have any intention of fixing it.  It's probably why they "broke" it in the first place.   <grrrr>  We can be hopeful though!

How about leaving some feedback. I already did !

http://www.apple.com/feedback/