External harddrive won't shut down in Mavericks

I have a WD studio II FW driver mirrored raid. It will sleep after the computer has gone to sleep but I had to wait over 30 seconds for it to spin down and for the LEDs to pulse showing it was in sleep mode. I will double check it again shortly.....

Update. With 10.9.3 I checked once again and my FW800 drive sleeps 2.5 min after my Mac sleeps. Finally starting to work. Also shuts down when Mac shuts down. Still not sure drive will sleep if inactive for some time. I will post if that also works.

With 10.9.3 my FW800 drive now sleeps but it takes about 2.5 min after my Mac sleeps so there is a delay. It also shuts down when Mac shuts down however it does not appear to shut down do to inactivity with the box checked in the energy pane. I also checked my USB3 drive and it works. It takes about 3 min to sleep after Mac sleeps. USB3 drive also shuts down do to inactivity and when Mac shuts down after about 12 minutes. I guess Apple has a delay timer in the software. Bottom line. USB3 all OK, FW800 almost all OK.

The "Disk was ejected improperly" bug does not appear to have been fixed. Both USB 3 and eSATA drives on my system are still improperly ejected by sleeping and waking the system.

I appreciate Snow Leopard more and more with each of these "updates".

Just updated to 10.9.3 and FW800 and Thunderbolt drive STILL DO NOT SLEEP when mac sleeps.

USB 3 still works normally.

Just discovered something. Right after I thought my FW drive would sleep, etc. I shut down my PC. Then powered up and now my external FW drive will not sleep (left FW drive on all the time). I found it only works once if after I power up my mac, then power up the FW drive it will sleep correctly but after Mac powers down and up again the drive will not sleep unless I power cycle the FW drive. Back to square #1!.

I noticed that same phenomena with 10.9.2, so yes, back to square 1.

UNBELIEVABLE...... MY DRIVE FINALLY SLEEPS.......

just a quick update..... users with Western Digital external FW devices may want to install the latest version of the WD Turbo driver from the WD website. It contains a specific driver for OSX 10.9

http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=114&sid=108&lang=en

I have a Studio II external hard drive and after installing the driver and restarting the mac mini the drive finaly spins down when not in use....

i'm was so shocked i had to sit down and have a cup of tea whilst watching the LED slowly pulse whilst it sleept......

Does this apply to bare WD drives in a custom enclosure or only WD "Book" drives? Not sure this is for all WD configs. Also, shut your Mac down, reboot and see if your WD drive still sleeps. Mine only worked the first time then never again after reboot for some reason.

The same problem here on my refurbished Macbook Pro. I still have the same problem like Rich K. The drive now spins down when the computer shuts, the disk is ejected and goes to sleep mode (blinking light on the front of the machine). The problem is the checkbox on Put disk to sleep when possible isn't doing anything. The FireWire hard drive and the internal hard drive both of them seems to be affected, they are not spinning down when inactive after 10 minutes.

The FireWire hard drive is spinning when I am not accessing it and mounted wich causes wear on the motor and heat. The internal hard drive is spinning and draws a lot of power on the battery (especially when playing music on iTunes wich require less disk access) resulting false reading on remaining battery time.

USB 2 & 3 seems to work perfectly but not using it because I need USB ports for other devices. Loved Mountain Lion but i have to get the latest Final Cut Pro X for compatibility on my librarys. Is there a way to run FCP X 10.1.1 on Mountain Lion ? This is the only reason I have to be on Mavericks!

The ports works perfectly on Bootcamp and Mountain Lion. I am sure this is a software issue. Called 3 Apple senior advisor and they said to reinstall Mavericks again (I starting to get tired of this they won't admit it that the problem is on their side).

System Specs :

Refurbished Macbook Pro mid 2012 15 inch

Intel Core i7 2.3 Quadcore

Nvidia Geforce GT 650m and Intel HD Graphics 4000

Momentus XT 750gb ST750lx003 (Hard drive that I replaced worked perfectly on Mountain Lion firmware up to date. This drive needs to sleep because it is a 7200rpm and it draws a lot of power against a 5400 rpm drive)

8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM

Mac OS X Version 10.9.3

LaCie d2 Quadra 2TB (switch is on Auto mode for power saving feature. Changed to ON mode no difference)

This thread needs to be active and I am waiting again for another call on Apple. I will keep you guys posted!

Thanks ludo860

The last suggestion I got from them was to go back to Moutain Lion, which I did on one of my computers and its working perfectly. I guess now they will just tell you to wait for Yosemite.

10.9.4 Update still does not fix this problem either.

I am sorry to say but this bug will never be corrected to some problems they had with the bridge with earlier versions of OS X. Here is a copy paste of the thread. Since i copy paste the discussions some bugs may not related like a internal hard drive not sleeping (I thought it had a conflict with my internal drive of my MacBook Pro). I should have asked if it will sleep using a Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 adapter but the thread was closed.

ludo860

Summary: The internal Hard Drive and FireWire of the mac is not sleeping when the mac is not using it. Make Hard Drive to sleep when possible is checked and nothing happens except my external USB Hard drive that is working properly. The platters are always spinning which is a problem for the lifespan of the disk and battery life.

Steps to Reproduce: The problem is always recurrent. When Mountain Lion was installed, it worked perfectly and the battery life better. Bootcamp with Windows 8 makes the hard drive sleep not problem. I am sure this is a software problem.

Expected Results: Hard drive is still spinning until the whole Mac goes to sleep.

Actual Results:

Version: Mac OS 10.9.3 Build 13D65

Notes: Mountain Lion works just fine but I was had to update to Mavericks for the Final Cut Pro X update. Working on a slow USB 2.0 port which fix the problem but I can’t have full benefit of the speed of the drive.

Configuration:

Attachments:

Apple Developer Relation:

Please provide a full System Information Report with the firewire drive attached.

To obtain a full System Information Report on OS X:

1. Select "About This Mac" from the Apple Menu

2. Click the “More Info…” button on the About This Mac window

3. Click “System Report…” on the next About This Mac window

4. Select "Save…" from the File menu (cmd-s)

5. Change the file name and save location as needed

6. Click the "Save" button

A System Information Report can also be obtained via Terminal using the following command:

/usr/sbin/system_profiler -detailLevel full -xml >mymachine.spx

This command will create a full System Information Report, named "mymachine.spx", which will open in System Profiler on another machine.

Please attach the file to your bug report.

ludo860:

I have modified the disk sleep timer to 1 min as you see on the system report. Using fs_uage in Terminal the system write on the internal drive every 30 seconds. fs_usage tracked it down and launchd is causing the issue. I have made a screenshot of the Terminal window. 'MacBook Pro.spx' and 'Screen Shot 2014-06-08 at 10.57.26 AM.png' were successfully uploaded. I would like also further explanation of this launchd process causing disk write every 30 seconds.

Apple Developper Relation:

Engineering has requested the following information in order to further investigate this issue:

The internal drive is the boot drive. There will be a 30 second launchd sync that flushes filesystem metadata to the drive. This behavior was the same on mountain lion. So its very unlikely that the internal drive is ever going to idle down.

The external FW drive not spinning down could be the result of a change we made to intentionally not power down certain external drives. These external drives have a bug where they drop off on power cycles.

Please attach a system profiler report with the FW drive attached so that we can confirm this.

To obtain a full System Information Report (also known as ASP, system profile, spx, system configuration):

1. Select "About This Mac" from the Apple Menu

2. Click the “More Info…” button on the About This Mac window

3. Click “System Report…” on the next About This Mac window

4. Select "Save…" from the File menu (cmd-s)

5. Change the file name and save location as needed

6. Click the "Save" button

A System Information Report can also be obtained via Terminal using the following command:

/usr/sbin/system_profiler -detailLevel full -xml >mymachine.spx

This command will create a full System Information Report, named "mymachine.spx", which will open on another machine.

Please attach the file to your bug report.

Please provide your response or results by updating your bug report.

Please compress any bundled files (e.g. nested folders) prior to uploading.

ludo860:

I am just anxious about the wear of the drive. Especially running iTunes which forces the system to stay awake to play music. As I understand, the drive has to be awake all the time to write small bytes of data every 30 seconds. I am wondering if playing music on iTunes with my Mac is harmeful to my boot drive?

The FW is a LaCie in which I updated the firmware of the case to it’s latest version. I have updated the firmware of the drive itself which is Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001-1CH164 to the CC29 revision. The external hard drive model case is a LaCie D2 Quadra.

Apple Developer Relation:

Engineering has determined that this issue behaves as intended based on the following:

The Firewire drive has an Oxford bridge and as such has sleep disabled. This is the correct behavior for that drive when attached via FireWire on 10.9.3. The USB bridge of that drive does not have that limitation.

Playing music is not harmful to your internal drive.

Please update your bug report to let us know if this is still an issue for you.

ludo860:

Is Yosemite will bring back the FireWire sleep feature? Many people are having the same problem on forums. You might say it is a correct behaviour for Mavericks but certainly not for the LaCie drive. Storage is expensive and it is irresponsible from your team to drop third party hardware without advertising the consumer.

As I recall, there was no information of dropping sleep feature when I had to upgrade to Mavericks. In this case, this is NOT a correct behaviour of Mavericks and this should be fixed as soon as possible.

links to forums having the issue

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1659332.html

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5486167?answerId=25976944022#25976944022

If I have bought a computer in which has a built-in FireWire bus and I was able to upgrade to Mavericks I shouldn’t have any problems on the FireWire part of the computer.

Apple Developer Relation:

Engineering has determined that this issue behaves as intended based on the following:

This is the proper behavior for this bridge. This is not changing in Mavericks or Yosemite.

We are now closing this bug report.

If you have questions regarding the resolution of this issue, please update your bug report with that information.

Please be sure to regularly check new Apple releases for any updates that might affect this issue.

ludo860:

If I understand correctly previous version of OS X wasn’t behaving correctly with Oxford bridge? It wasn’t intended that the drive sleep when there is no activity on Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard?

Apple Developer Relation:

Engineering has provided the following information:

The problem is that with the previous OS versions when the bridge did not handle the sleep commands properly it would fall off the bus during overnight or long sleep periods.

We are now closing this bug report again.

Please be sure to regularly check new Apple releases for any updates that might affect this issue.

ludo860:

If I understand correctly the bridge wasn’t behaving as expected on Mac OS systems on sleep commands. Why should it be working perfectly on Windows computers? The drive is always plugged in because it is used as Time Machine drive. It is normal that the drive is spinning 24 hour?

ludo860:

I need an answer from you guys the bridge never dropped the connection on previous version of OS X since Tiger. May I have this function only on my computer? My LaCie always behaved correctly when the platters stopped spinning. When I opened a folder on the drive, the disk wakes up and it works.

END OF THE DISCUSSION

Thanks ludo860 for that depressing response from Apple Developer Relations.

If they new this was normal behavior they would not of made you jumped thru all those hoops.

"The problem is that with the previous OS versions when the bridge did not handle the sleep commands properly it would fall off the bus during overnight or long sleep periods."

This statement is simply not true, my Mountain Lion FireWire goes to sleep mode 10 MINUTES after inactivity, not long periods of sleep nor overnight situations. 10 MINUTES of no activity it sleeps. As soon as it has network activity the FireWire drive wakes up for access. Mavericks killed this.

"The external FW drive not spinning down could be the result of a change we made to intentionally..."

If it was intentional then again why did they make you provide all that system information for a behavior they NOW consider to be normal.

"These external drives have a bug where they drop off on power cycles."

None of mine did. So Apple will modify their OS becuase a third party hardware has a bug?

I don't think so.

Does Thunderbolt use the same Oxford Bridge?

My Thunderbolt external drive will not sleep either since Mavericks.

Maybe this is just another Mavericks bug I mean intentional feature?

Either way they consider this a closed issue. My Apple Tech Support guy eventually told me to go back to Mountain Lion which I did on one of my Macs in it went back to working normally.

I was thinking to put a task that runs every 4 hours or so to wake up the drive when it was starting to drop the FireWire connection. Disabling the sleep command completely is personally the most laziest solution to fix this bug.

I would deeply like to go on Mountain Lion but I am stuck with library’s on the latest version of Final Cut Pro X. There is no other way to convert them back in Final Cut Events and Final Cut Projects files.

Lucky enough, I have USB 3 so i will use those instead…

This is really disappointing for a company that wants to protect the environnement and save the energy.