Lacie disk on FW not sleeping after installing Mavericks

You are absolutely correct that the data must be applied to the appropriate situation. In fact, the case is even more complicated than you described. Prolonged shut downs are actually unfavorable for systems as this can lead to accumulation of dust within the computer itself. No one would advocate a shut down in a Server situation, where data corruption may occur for connected clients. Furthermore, both Tufts University, and U Penn have shown that power data for sleep/moderate/heavy use are signifciantly different for laptops than desktops.

The point I am making is that this notion that "nightly shut downs of your computer causes adverse power cycling that damages the computer" is a total and utter myth.

In fact, Apple themselves advocate regular nightly shut downs over nightly sleep for the sole purpose of reducing wear on the computer at a cost of convenience. That is a fact. If you do not believe me, I welcome you to contact Apple and prove me wrong. The fact that most people choose to sleep their computer is one that I concede. However, most people choose this because the actual difference in wear on the computer is small and it is much more convenient to sleep and wake than the alternative.

Hello. Interesting discussion. Here are some more inputs ...

Dust accumulates when a computer runs because it "***** up" airborne particles with its fans. I've lost a drive prematuraliy that way, totally covered up with sticky dust that prevented it from cooling down. Thank you for mentionning the "dust" problem.

I'm an electronics engineer with 35 years of experience in the field, employed by a major electronic components manufacturer for the past 27 years (I don't know of any Apple engineer with that seniority). At work, none of my machines go to sleep, servers and workstations alike: They are all properly cooled down and there is much less airborne dust than at home ... and I'm in front of them 12 h/day !

I swich to Sleep the family iMac because it's noisy and its several external HDs are not ventilated enough in the family room where it sits.

I do not fear letting my MacBook Pro run 24/7 if needed. It has happened a few times. But then, I place it on top of a large aluminium slab to help better dissipate the heat from its bottom.

In any case: a machine does not need to "rest", if it's properly dissipating its heat. However, If one plans to use a computer 1 hour per day, and its components have a 1000 hours MTBF, it makes sense to let it powered down for the remaining 23 hours of the day. If that computer is cycled down and up 10 times a day, then the induced thermal stress will reduce the expected 1000 hours of MTBF to 500 hours (rough figure). Then it's not worth it.

I guess the readers of these posts have enough information now to make up their mind about this topic. Thanks for bringing it up.

"a machine does not need to "rest", if it's properly dissipating its heat." 😮

Agree mr patio,

It just irritates me when people post completely innacurate information, particularly when numerous users are trying to make decisions on configuring their systems with this new difficulty of FireWire drives no longer entering standby mode normally.

Just updated to 10.9.3 and FW800 drive now sleeps when mac sleeps (after about 2.5 min.). It also shuts down OK when Mac shuts down but will not sleep based on energy pane setting. However, my USB3 drive now works (sleeps) in all modes but will it takes about 12 min. to shut down after mac shuts down. Looks like some timer function. I guess finally got some fixes.

Just updated to 10.9.3 and FW800 and Thunderbolt drive STILL DO NOT SLEEP when mac sleeps. (30 minutes after MAC went to sleep External Drives were still spinning).

It also will not sleep based on energy pane setting.

USB 3 still works normally.

I also just updated to 10.9.3 and same effect as OzziesMAC...no change whatsoever.

You do have FREE 90 day support on OS upgrades even if your warranty is expired.

Just call Apple Care at 1-800-277-5322 with your Mac Serial Number and ask to speak

with a senoir advisor about your issue with 10.9.3.

Keep reminding them that this is not fixed!

ivansnikki wrote:

I also just updated to 10.9.3 and same effect as OzziesMAC...no change whatsoever.

At, I believe, v10.9.2, there was a minor improvement wherein following a precise sequence, the FW drives could be shutdown and unplugged safely.

The 10.9.3 revision seems to have made another step forward. It is better, but still sorely lacking. I'll summarize my current experience. Before, that, I want to say something about OS changes in general, not just Mac. I have long adhered to a rule not to make the switch to a new OS until seeing at least the 3rd numbered revision. At Mavericks, I deviated from that 'prime directive'. I regret it, but that still is no excuse for Apple's failure to correct a serious problem. Here we are, finally at the third revision, and the basic problem with FW drives persists. If sound software design principles were followed from the beginning, this never should have happened. Shades of Microsoft.

1. The drives now will sleep when the computer is either commanded to sleep ("Patience, Grasshoppah"), or when the computer sleeps according to the Energy Saver time setting in System Preferences. While asleep, if the Time Machine is active, the scheduled backups APPEAR to occur on schedule, and the drive otherwise remains asleep.

2. The drives DO NOT go to sleep or idle regardless of the setting in Energy Saver to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". In other words, this means the basic problem has not been corrected.

3. If Shut Down is commanded from the menu, or commands other than via the Power Switch, the drives now are powered down normally (again, Patience is required). In my original post I noted that the system would hang up 'forever' and not shut down until forced to do so with an extended Power Switch press. That would cause an abnormal shutdown and subsequent recovery of the drives. That problem partially has been corrected as long as you use a software command to Shut Down, e.g. the Menu. If you want to use the Power Switch to turn power off, be sure to eject the drives and unplug them from the computer before using the Power Switch.

In summary, the basic problem of FW drives running 'forever' has not been corrected, far from it. However, at least now by carefully selecting computer sleep onset in Energy Saver, casual computer use is possible. On the other hand, if you plan extended periods of active computing with FW drives attached, Apple still seeks to severely reduce your hardware lifetime.

New Problem (unrelated?): While spending all this time in Sleep, I noticed that the Message option in Display Sleep fails to display the normal Message (and clock if so set).

I hope and pray that HP wakes up and makes HP-UX and basic applications available to the normal consumer. Those things all exist right now. i suspect that the deveoper community would quickly respond favorably. Many solid applcations (dare I say bulletproof) and GUI existed for HP's Unix long before Apple chose Unix as its core.

The drives now will sleep when the computer is either commanded to sleep ("Patience, Grasshoppah"), or when the computer sleeps according to the Energy Saver time setting in System Preferences.

This is not the case with neither one of my iMac's, the external drive(FW800) still does not sleep via Energy Saver nor when the computer is commanded to sleep. My other iMac has 2 external drives daisy chained together with FW800 and has the same exact problem.

Patience is not a problem, but after Mac being in sleep mode for over an hour and one can still hear the external hard drives spiining away renders this issue unresolved.

I also have a Mac mini that I switch back to Mountain Lion in that one behaves just fine.

Spoke with AE today and they confirmed 10.9.3 has not made any changes to the FW issue.

It seems Apple is steadfast is their lack of concern for this issue.

The computer I used for the tests in my last note is a recent MacBook Pro, i7, 4GB RAM, 1TB drive. There are two FW800 2TB drives, daisychained.

I'd been putting off updating my wife's 27" iMac. It is about 2 years older than the laptop, with identical resources. It was the machine where I first noticed the problem. Currently it has a single 2TB FW800 drive.

So, given the failure of others to reproduce what I saw with the laptop, I just went through the process of preparing for and making the update to 10.9.3 on my wife's iMac. I made the new iTunes update at the same time, though that was just a matter of convenience.

Bottom line, I repeated the tests, and as reported by others, Sleep don't work on our iMac!

Just to be clear, before I made the change to 10.9.3 on the laptop, I verified that it still had the Sleep problem, namely, commanding the computer to sleep did not result in the FW drives going to sleep. So, the update to 10.9.3 on the laptop definitely changed something. I just finished doing the udate to iTunes, repairing permissions, etc. and the Sleep command still works.

So, there's material for confusion: all Mac models do not conduct themselves equally regarding this FW800 disk problem. Nuts.

PS My wife has been having problems with Apple Mail on her iMac running at a slower than glacial pace. So far it's confined to her user account, but she has nothing that would stress the mail system. Yet another problem coincident with Mavericks. We are not alone with that problem. I changed her to use Entourage, but the last revision of that is pretty old and also giving her assorted, workable, problems.

Sad to say today my FW800 drive will not sleep. I found that if after my Mac is running I power on my FW drive it will sleep when my Mac sleeps but if I reboot my Mac (leaving FW drive powered on) my FW drive will not sleep. I guess the issue remains.

It seems Apple is steadfast is their lack of concern for this issue.

Apple does not consider this to be a bug at all. It's a feature. It's working the way Apple wants it to work.

This change was made to address an issue where some FireWire drives would spontaneously force eject themselves when spinning down. Having them never spin down is Apple's way of preventing that problem.

Don't count on Apple to "fix" this problem. The situation itself is a fix, to a different problem. Many may consider this to be a poor solution, but it is the solution Apple has made.

We, the users, need to take matters into our own hands and make our own solutions. In my case, my Firewire drives will only spin down when I eject them. So I am now using Sleepwatcher with a pair of scripts to automatically eject all of my drives when I put my Mac to sleep, and automatically mount them when waking up.

Beyond that Apple considers FW "dead tech"...there will be no solution from Apple (I have been saying this for months).

I replaced my FW drives with Thunderbolt ones last year and they work perfectly.