External harddrive won't shut down in Mavericks

Does the external also spin when you do NOT start from it but from the internal disk?

I can not simulate your situation, I do not have it. Since I have a SSD inside as startupdisk, I have set the computer to never sleep. The externals spin down when not used.

I have a MacBook Pro Retina 2.6GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD

3x1TB Seagate Free Agent FW Drives connected to thunderbolt port. They do not shut down when ejected or when the computer is shutdown. You have to physically disconnect the power to the drives to turn them off.

This is a serious issue with Mavericks in relation to external drives connected through cables. This issue is not evident with other computers that I have that back-up through our wireless network. The issue seems to be when connecting through thunderbolt or USB ports.

I know it's no relief, but since the latest updates from Microsoft to my XP system I seem to suffer from the

same issues there with respect to USB drives.

In a film they would find out that one company had stolen (bad) code from the other.

... but this is the real world.

Now, reading all above, I am reluctant to upgrade my MacBook to Mavericks.

Thanks to you all; in the Netherlands they say: "A ship stranded warns those still out on the sea".

;JOOP!

No matter whether the internal drive is SSD or HD or Fusion, no matter whether the CPU is asleep or awake, no matter if they have been ejected/unmounted, my USB drives do not spin down. Ditto with the FireWire 800 drive attached to a machine with a Fusion internal drive.

Apple's secondary support referred this to Engineering. Believe it or not, I was informed that in Mavericks Apple changed their power-control functions and that this is the fault of all the companies using generic USB and FireWire protocols for not changing their firmware to keep up with Apple.

I assume that this was the response of somebody trying to protect his or his working group's nether regions but it bodes ill for seeing a quick fix.

NB: this is with three brands of drive in four brands of enclosure with no drivers or low-level software not supplied by Apple.

Not sure what is happening with some but my external 1TB WD drive mounted in my enclosure(Macally) has no issue shutting down just as it did with ML. I'm using 2012 Mini with Mavericks and all is OK. I have it connected via USB3.

Same issue with me. I have external drive that is noisy now with mavericks and even if I use disc utility to unmount , it still stinning loudly and doesn't spin down unless i turn off mac. I have imac 2007

Everyone please submit bug report to apple

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Same issue here. 2TB Seagate Firewire 800 and 1TB Western Digital USB. 2009 iMac running Mavericks. I only started having issues once I upgraded OS. Feedback left for Apple. Thanks Gregh3838 for the link.

I'm having the same issue with my external drive 3TB LaCie d2 Quadra v3. It won't spin down ever and worked fine in Mountain Lion.

LaCie´s support customer said thats its a Mavericks / Apple issue and they can´t do anything :-(

very bad for Apple to ignore these things

hope a fix comes out soon!

In another discussion https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5533971

I found this solution. Not final but temporarily solves the problem:

"Exclude the drive from indexing in the Spotlight preference pane and see whether there's any change." by Linc Davis

also still waiting for apple to solve it

cem222: I have Mavericks in a 2011 MBP and in a 2012 MBP (USB3). And I do NOT have this problem with external drives (Although I do not use the thunderbolt port, so I can not say anything about that). I do however use USB3 external drives.

Linc is right: of course there is no spindown when Spotlight is indexing (or checking out to see if the index db is still up to date). Or any other software that addresses that drive.

My LaCie drive has alwas been set up to not get indexed by Spotlight. Has no effect on this problem for me. However I'm not connecting it to the Thunderbolt port, but the dedicated Firewire800 port.

(MBP i7, mid 2011)

You are right the spotlight has no effect on this problem. It's a shame

• MacBook Pro Retina
• Mavericks OS 10.9
• 2.6GHz Intel Core i7,
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB SSD
• 3x1TB Seagate Free Agent FW Drives connected to thunderbolt port.

I just connected an external drive using USB, when I eject, the drive spins down — the issue is not with USB.

In my scenario the issue is obvoiusly connecting my FW Drives using the thunderbolt port. I cannot test to see if this issue is specific to FW Drives or Thunderbolt Drives as I do not have a dedicated Thunderbolt external drive for testing.