Lacie disk on FW not sleeping after installing Mavericks

I suppose could be model dependant? I do not have these but only repeating what I have read.

It is model dependent. Drives with certain (but not all) types of Oxford FireWire chipsets will no longer spin down. This is to address an issue where drives may spontaneously eject themselves when spinning down. Have a look at the 10.8 and earlier OS X forums; you will see many threads about it.

This ejecting problem is a fault of the drives, and not a fault of Apple's. Having these drives never spin down is Apple's way of fixing the spontaneously ejecting problem.

We may argue that this fix is poorly implemented (i.e. my drives have never had this problem) or that it's just creating a bigger problem (now my drives spin 24/7) but what is clear is that this is not a bug. It is fully intentional on Apple's part.

I was able to make my own fix for this by using sleepwatcher to invoke a script to automatically eject/remount the drives when my Mac sleeps/wakes, which does cause them to spin down properly during system sleep. If you want a solution to this problem, taking matters into your own hands is the only way. A "fix" from Apple will never come, since Apple considers this to be not a bug, but a feature.

Thanks for the info Király! OWC said it was an issue with Apple but this makes sense to me. I did try Jettison to get the drives to eject every time but that created more issues so I got rid of it. Can you point me to a link where I can properly install sleepwatcher script in terminal?

Thanks again 🙂

Apparently, Apple changed their mind and has made some changes. With 10.9.3, LaCie external FireWire drives now spin down when my MacBook Pro sleeps. However, those connected to our iMac do not (all drives are the same model). Previously, they both worked the same way. At least now, if I follow a specific procedure, I can eject, power down the external FW drives and disconnect them properly. Previously, they never spun down, and I had to disconnect them, after commanding them to eject (they'd eject, but keep spinning).

I believe that before 10.9.3, (10.9.2 ?), the computer shutdown process no longer hung up waiting for the drives to spin down, which they never did, thus hanging up shutdown. That was particularly annoying and afflicted both the laptop and MacBook. So, there's another change that Apple made, though admittedly they had to because that behavior was unacceptable.

The drives wake up for various things, obviously foremost is when the computer wakes up. The 'put disks to sleep when possible' is still not honored.

I have noticed that, also with Mavericks, logging out of your account will remount and spin up any connected external FW drives. That is definitely different from before.

In summary, apparently Apple continues to do something addressing this and related issues. The disparity between the iMac and MacBook Pro is particularly odd, and not consistent with intending that the drives remain spinning as long as they are connected, mounted and the computer is on.

Considering the community's investment in FW external drives, they should at least return to the original cofiguration. I suspect the number of users affected by random eject is a minority. In the current condition, there are a lot more unhappy users.

We, the users, are left in the middle of this mess. Surely Apple and the drive makers could have sorted this out by now. And where is MacWorld in advising its subscribers on what to do? Asleep, it seems.

The funniest thing is I just spoke to AE and they still mantain that Apple has no official documentation that there are any issues with FW drives entering standby mode. According to Apple, Mavericks has not caused any changes with external drive management. The issue may be fixed with Yosemite, but I doubt it. I'm sure Apple considers FW dead technology. Since I upgraded my FW drive to T-bolt, I have had no issues whatsoever.

MacWorld is definitely not going to get involved as they are essentially a mouthpiece for Apple. Plus, both entities want to shift users to more expensive, and newer T-bolt drives.

I wouldn't hold my breath on this FW issue, but it will be interesting to see if Yosemite solves the problem....

Thunderbolt and FW800 external drives still not going to sleep unless I force them to manually. USB 3.0 works fine.

MacWorld has made minimum mention about it, so I agree not a good magazine to hear the truth Apple products IMHO.

Yosemite coming out now so odds are this issue will stay with Mavericks.

Tested with 10.9.4 my Firewire drives still don't spin down. :-( Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My USB drives spin down, but when I switch off my hibernated iMac and switch it on again my iMac tells me that I did not eject them properly. This did work with Mountain Lion without a problem. :-( Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr²

Yep, it has been that way since the launch of Mavericks. Even my Thunderbolt port does not spin down properly. Now that Yosemite is around the corner I fully expect this issue will be fully ignored in Mavericks. Just hope Yosemite fixes it but I am sure it will introduce new headaches.

I hope I find the time to test it with Yosemite this weekend.

I found the time to test it with Yosemite Beta.

The problem still exists! :-(

SAD APPLE, VERY SAD. Did I say that this is really SAD?

As expected. Apple claims that this is how firewire to an external drive is suppose to work now. It's a new "Feature", and all future OS's will be the same... issue closed. Now if my external Thunderbolt drives don't get fixed with Yosemite I will really be unhappy. 😠

Apple claims that this is how firewire to an external drive is suppose to work now. It's a new "Feature", and all future OS's will be the same... issue closed.

What? Where do you found that? I never saw this!

It's been posted on this apple forum several times, somebody even posted the chat they had with Apple Engineering clearly saying thats how it is suppose to work now. I don't like it either since I have several drives that are FW only and now I have to manually shut them off therefore they are useless on my server.

Don't have time to search for it now, maybe one of those posters can put a link back to it but the bottom line is this is how FireWire is suppose to work now.

Jettison works perfectly well for me on my FW800 G-Technology 1 TB drive. I can select only this drive to exhibit the proper behaviour both for sleep and shutdown/restart. I have not attempted with FW400. It's an inexpensive solution:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/Jettison/index.html