External harddrive won't shut down in Mavericks

Damien wrote:

USB2 Mac mini with TB

.....

The FW800 drive will not spin down at all until it's onboard timer spins it down. Nothing I do will make it spin down any sooner other than writing a script to spin it down which I have not yet tried. (tomorrow.. I'm tired)

.......

What is this "on board timer"? Is it part of the Firewire drive, if so where can it be adjusted?

(I know about System Preferences > Energy Saver > "Put hard drives to sleep when possible"— it doesn't work with Firewire.)

Any news on a workaround/fix or is the answer to wait for a Mavericks update?

A post elsewhere commented that, sadly, the fix will not be included in the next update of Mavericks. But, who knows?

Stevekir: some HDD's will spin (power) down after so many minutes of inactivity. Some HDD enclosures also have that feature. However, some do not.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Actually its a BINARY issue (Mavericks and WD control software)

I have the problem but do not run WD control software. Never did, was never on any of my drives.

Installed the update right now.
I'm going to test if the update fixes the issue with my external hard drive (Western digital green inside the inxtron sk-3500 super s3, connected via firewire 800).

OS X 10.9.1 don't fix this issue. Tested with G-Tech 4TB connected via firewire 800. Disappointed with Apple...

Mee too, installed 9.1 on an external HD. My Firewire external drives will not sleep even when they are ejected. I will now delete Mavericks and return to Mountain Lion.

IF Apple deign to fix this bug, it looks like it would take months and by that time the next OS update will be looming. So what's the use of Mavericks? Its good it was free = what it's worth.

For what it's worth, I've found that when only hooking up one FW800 drive it will sleep.

I am also experiencing this with my 2 TB FW800 Hard drives from Seagate. This was not a problem 2 hours ago when I was running Mountain Lion. This has to be fixed!!! I will go back to Mountain Lion for now.

swizzy wrote:

For what it's worth, I've found that when only hooking up one FW800 drive it will sleep.

Thanks. I will try that.

Same here, 10.9.1 didn't fix this for me either. I have one Lacie and one SansDigital Firewire 800 enclosure, none of which spin down when the computer goes to sleep. Super annyoing, especially if you use the external drive as a TimeMachine backup destination. I really don't want to have the drives spin all the time for no reason.

Carsten Langrock wrote:

I really don't want to have the drives spin all the time for no reason.

Until there is a resolution you do NOT what to let that happen. Disconnect when not needed.

swizzy wrote:

For what it's worth, I've found that when only hooking up one FW800 drive it will sleep.

I have Mavericks 9.1 on a LaCie ext. Firewire 800 drive. I unplugged my other two Firewires so that the Mavericks one was the only one connected. I started up the iMac with the Mavericks drive as the startup drive.It did not sleep although I would expect it to. (I didn't go to the bother of cloning Mavericks on to the internal drive and starting up on that, which would be a full test.) So, no joy. I am still on Mountain Lion.