Bus power while sleeping on mid-2012 15" MacBook Pro?
I have an external hard drive connected to the Firewire 800 port with a FW800-FW800 cable. It is bus-powered. On my previous Mac, a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro, the drive would remain powered while the computer was asleep - it would spin down, but the lights on the drive would remain on, and it would spin up again when the computer woke up. Perfect. But my mid-2012 15" MacBook Pro cuts off bus power in sleep mode, so the drive no longer wakes up with the computer. Both are running OS X 10.8.3.
The FireWire Ports: Specifications KB article says, "Output power is always available if the Apple computer is connected to AC power or is running (even on battery). Output power can be used to power FireWire hubs and devices such as disk drives and audio break-out boxes that operate within the limits of the computer’s FireWire port." I don't know whether "always available" includes sleep mode.
The reason this is a problem is because when I wake up the computer, the drive remains off, so any applications that had open files from that drive get confused, changes lost, etc. Basically, it's a disturbance.
I have tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC on the newer MBP, but it didn't change this behavior.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)