Lacie disk on FW not sleeping after installing Mavericks

Repeated post deleted.

Spent quite a bit of time with Apple Enterprise today and learnt quite a bit regarding this issue.

First of all, I run a Mac Mini Server, which complicates the issue quite a bit. For those of you running server app, Mac OSX Servers are not truly designed to sleep (server processes actually block sleep by default) and Apple recommends you do NOT sleep your server computers. This by itself may be related to why external disks are not sleeping.

We tested both G-Technology drives on my system (Firewire and Thunderbolt) and interestingly after 30 seconds the Thunderbolt drive DID spin down, while the Firewire drive continued to spin. After extensive investigation, we found that the issue was actually related to SMB2, which Mavericks has now incorporated, that significantly increases transfer speeds as opposed to AFP (apple file protocol). Switching the server to AFP from SMB2 DID cause the Firewire drive to spin down.

For those of you running Server app, obviously this is not a desirable solution as it will significantly impact the speed of your server. Apple Enterprise suggested shutting down your system as opposed to sleeping the Mac. Shutting down the Mac caused BOTH drives to spin down within about 10 seconds. Apple actually recommends that you shut down as opposed to sleep, which can interefere with Server functions. Apple themselves shut down ALL systems for all of their support centers and power them up 30 minutes prior to work. Apple has also directly stated that shutting down routinely is very energy effecient and completely safe (I don't think they would do it for all of their computers if it wasn't 100% safe).

For those of you running a simple client without Server, who are essentially using the drive for Time Machine or the like, the easiest solution is probably to connect the drive via USB or purchase an Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, which essentially treates the Firewire drive like a Thunderbolt one and will cause it to spin down on SMB2. This is another 30 bucks down the drain, but will solve the problem and maintain the speed of Firewire.

The new Mac Pros do not have Firewire, and because this issue does not occur with either USB3 or Thunderbolt (I was previously wrong), I do not think Apple will be working on a fix (Apple Enterprise indicated to me that this is NOT a known issue or problem).

Anyways - hope this post was helpful!

lcrooks wrote:

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The new Mac Pros do not have Firewire, and because this issue does not occur with either USB3 or Thunderbolt (I was previously wrong), I do not think Apple will be working on a fix (Apple Enterprise indicated to me that this is NOT a known issue or problem).

Anyways - hope this post was helpful!

If you are right, its pretty miserable and neglectful of Apple to cold-bloodedly ignore all those users who have FireWire external drives. Apple used to be a friendly helpful company. "It just works"?! Those were the days.

I definitely understand your frustration, but you have to remember that USB3 and now Thunderbolt2, especially, are considerably faster than Firewire. Firewire has now become dated technology. I am even considering selling my old Firewire drive and upgrading to a new, much faster, much larged Thunderbolt drive.

Plus, if you only want to sleep your system over night - it would be incredibly safe and probably better for the life of your Mac and external drive to shut down as opposed to sleep.

If ultimately you don't want to shut down and want to maintain the speed of Firewire 800 (I am assuming) over USB2 then it is possible for 30 bucks with the adapter.

I know it's not ideal, but ultimately Firewire has now gone the way of the Dinosaur, so you cannot expect Apple to put this at the top of the priority level, especially since this problem is induced by SMB2 (a windows product) that is considerably faster.

Much thanks for the report on discussions with Apple Enterprise. And I think your analysis of the situation makes a lot of sense - this will not be an issue that apple addresses. It is old tech, apple has moved on, and compatability has never been their gig.

Now I can get to work planning my re-install of Snow Leopard. My external media is far more important than Mavericks to me.

lcrooks wrote:

I definitely understand your frustration, but you have to remember that USB3 and now Thunderbolt2, especially, are considerably faster than Firewire. Firewire has now become dated technology. I am even considering selling my old Firewire drive and upgrading to a new, much faster, much larged Thunderbolt drive.

Plus, if you only want to sleep your system over night - it would be incredibly safe and probably better for the life of your Mac and external drive to shut down as opposed to sleep.

If ultimately you don't want to shut down and want to maintain the speed of Firewire 800 (I am assuming) over USB2 then it is possible for 30 bucks with the adapter.

I know it's not ideal, but ultimately Firewire has now gone the way of the Dinosaur, so you cannot expect Apple to put this at the top of the priority level, especially since this problem is induced by SMB2 (a windows product) that is considerably faster.

So time moves on. But it would have been helpful if Apple had announced a year or so ahead that they were not supporting Firewire. I subscribe to one of the World's leading monthly magazines and visit Apple-oriented sites frequently and saw no signs of Firewire becoming obsolete, so I bought a 2 TB Firewire drive a month ago.

I am not happy, not in the least. With all the other glitches (unresloved by three visits to a Genius Bar) that my iMac (2011) has been afflicted by over the last 2 1/2 years (eg, mouse cursor/pointer disappearing which others have suffered, to mention only one), and Windows 7 being highly rated by seversl of my contacts, my next computer is unlikely to be a Mac. The magic has gone.

Thank you loads to putting this on the fruit platter.... well, its not yet the end of the story I honestly presume - but whatever, I for myself, with iMac 2010 and 2x8TB FW800+ 1TB FW800 for TM am frustrated, sure, but will invest in the Thunderbolt/FW adapter.... as to the MacMagic: no way its in danger, not by a very very long shot... at work I am forced to use the latest Windows - let me tell you: it ***** on all fronts... so: no reason yet to jump the boat - however, this inability to communicate and address is an big Apple weakness, for sure.... Thx again iCrooks.

There is absolutely no doubt that there have been considerable improvements in other OS, such as Windows and Linux/Ubuntu. In fact, Apple is now borrowing a fair amount of OS structure, such as SMB2 from Windows and Apache from Linux, amongst others. I recently looked at buying an iPad and opted for the much more powerful, and functional Windows Surface 2 because it allows me to have a mouse (imagine that!), a USB-3 port (something Apple has promised the iPad will NEVER have!), and full Microsoft Office so I can use the 500 dollar device for more than just browsing the web and playing angry birds.

Apple used to be head and tails above the crowd, but those days have since passed. To be honest, I am astonished you are surprised Apple has completely abondoned Firewire - they have a track record of abondoning features and products when it does not suit them. Example - can anyone explain why they suddenly changed the adapter on all of their iOS devices last year and essentially rendered all prior adapters, power chords, and products completely obsolete?

Loving Apple products is like loving that insanely beautiful girl in your high school class - she's stunning to look at, but invariably will be a huge pain in your *** in the long run, not to mention incredibly expensive to maintain....

Sorry, but although a superficially convincing explanation it doesn’t address how I - albeit accidentally - solved the problem temporarily. Something altered after I changed startup disc to ML and then reverted to Mavericks. If, as you suggest, the issue lies in Apple's adoption of the SMB2 protocol, nothing should have changed. Except that it did. Perhaps a further visit to Apple Enterprise group is in order?

The issue is NOT to sleep or to shut down the whole system.

The expectation is that FW disks go to sleep when they have not been used for some time, even if the Mac itself is continued to be used for other tasks. Just as they used to priot to Mavericks.

3TB++ disks spinning @ 7200rpm used for post-production used to sleep when not actively beeing used. Now they just keep spinning all day long which not only is annoying but also significantly decreases the disks lifetimes.

That whole blabla about SMB2 and xservers and so on is not at all an answer to what people want...+

lcrooks wrote:

.......

Apple used to be head and tails above the crowd, but those days have since passed. To be honest, I am astonished you are surprised Apple has completely abondoned Firewire - they have a track record of abondoning features and products when it does not suit them. Example - can anyone explain why they suddenly changed the adapter on all of their iOS devices last year and essentially rendered all prior adapters, power chords, and products completely obsolete?

.......

I am not worried or astonished that Apple has abandoned FireWire (things come and go), but that they did not warn us a year ago. Having warned us, they could surely have fixed the Firewire no sleep feature for now, giving people time to change to other external HDs in an orderly way, and in my case, I would not have wasted money in buying a 2 TB Firewire drive in November. A caring company would have done that. Imagine a gross hypothetical example of that sort of behaviour: Apple made Mavericks and later OSs work only on current and later computers, without notice!

But I wonder whether Apple, having decided to kill Firewire, purposely introduced the Firewire no sleep as a feature, to get rid of it, and a quick way to do that would be to do it suddenly, without notice. But that would be the action of an uncaring company.

If you want your FireWire drive to sleep during use then just change default smb2 to afp and ensure the sleep feature for hard disks when not in use is checked under energy settings. This allowed my FireWire drive to sleep. You lose a lot of performance this way, but it will achieve the result you desire.

I think we knew Apple was "an uncaring company" when we heard that workers at apple's factories were jumping to their deaths...long before they abondoned FireWire support on Mavericks....

lcrooks wrote:

If you want your FireWire drive to sleep during use then just change default smb2 to afp and ensure the sleep feature for hard disks when not in use is checked under energy settings

But I have my Mac Pro settings on AFP as the default, which suggests your explanation is flawed. It seems there’s more here than you’re being told.

Whatever lcrooks's motivation is: The solution is none..