Mavericks and External Hard Drives

Wonderful point, I've provided my feedback. Let's hope the next update gets us a solution. There's still a lot of Firewire out there, and I can't believe this issue has lived on through two updates of Mavericks.

Everybody should make sure to give Apple feedback on this issue. It is very annoying. 😟

I found the issue at least for my scenario! I noticed I had 4 drives daisy chained up to my thunderbolt monitor. 3 of them would sleep but the 4th never would. I would also get eject error messages all the time. I have to plug each drive into the wall, but I thought maybe the one cable running to the display isn't enough to control all these drives. I hooked the drive that wouldn't sleep right up to my laptop and left the other drives hooked up to the monitor, and bam, it sleeps, and never improperly ejects. I don't think the solution is switching cables, I think if you are not running everything off the computer, eventually with enough preripherals it just starts to fail. Try it!

I found this discussion too late.

I have a mid-2010 iMac 27" running 10.9.2, with iomega and lacie external drives connected in daisy chain on firewire 800.

My iomega eGo had been ejecting frequently (with an error message) since Snow Leopard and upgrading to Mavericks made things worse, rather than better. My Lacie D2 has been fine throughout - although both were connected via firewire.

Yesterday my iomega disappeared from Finder/Disk Utility. It still powers up and spins (but makes a strange noise).

I have noticed that my Lacie is powered up all the time - even though it is only used for backup and I have the put disks to sleep when possible option checked.

I also had an old Apple Time Capsule die a few months ago, but I put that down to old age - now I wonder ...

I just ordered a new external drive to replace my iomega, but I am not even sure how I will connect it when it arrives. I have the option of Firewire 800 or USB2.0. My Lacie is still connected via Firewire 800, but I think I will have to try it on USB2.0, or risk losing it.

C'mon Apple - you need to fix this!

I lost one 2TB drive that was 2 years old and I am sure it is becuase of this. It was running 24/7 and I did not know this till it was too late. I replaced the drive and thats when I noticed that the external drives are simply never entering sleep mode.

fast Forward a few months later after working with Apple Support and the last reccomedation I got from them is to go back to Mountain Lion. 😕

fast Forward a few months later after working with Apple Support and the last reccomedation I got from them is to go back to Mountain Lion. 😕

Wow that is really disappointing. At the minimum I would have expected "Engineering is aware of the Firewire issue with Mavericks and it will be addressed in a future Mavericks update." I would think this would be high on the priority list to fix!

Very, very disappointing. 😮

Does anybody know if the new 10.9.3 Beta even addresses this issue?

https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram

I can add this to the discussion.

I have a Mac Pro with both usb2 and firewire 800. All drives acted correctly with usb2 but I did not like the speed so I went in search of a FW solution. I tried 3 different manufacturers and none of them worked to my satisfaction WRT sleep (some would sleep when the mac slept, some would not, some would sleep un eject but if spun up by .fseventd they wouls stay spun up)...what they all had in common is the oxford chipset (different flavors but all oxford). In fact, it's pretty hard to find a non-oxford FW drive.

I then went to USB3. My first attempt was with a TI chipset and it wouldn't sleep right. I then went to an ASMedia chipset (1053e) and finally it worked. The mac pro doesn't have usb3 so I used a Inatech kt4004 which uses the same usb3 chip as a new mac pro.

What is amazing is now that I am back on Mountain Lion I see how much slower Mavericks made my Mac.

I am thinking now I will just stay with ML even if they fix the external drive issue.

ssis6: I hope it will be a long time before I need to buy another external HD. I have lost all confidence in this area, have been let down by Apple. Arrogant? I say so.

I noticed that after the 10.9.2 update the firewire eject issue is gone. Now my drives eject perfectly.

Macbook Pro Mid-2009 Unibody 2.8Ghz, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD 840PRO

Does anybody know if the new 10.9.3 Beta even addresses this issue?

Unfortunately, anyone who might know cannot answer that question as they have to abide by their NDA and not divulge any info.

RS232, optical drives, user upgradable memory, now FW. It's never fun to see something get depreciated but the cheap usb3 sleds I bought (called plugable on amazon) are really great and now I'm cloning as fast as the HDD will go. When I carry my remote clones to work, I only carry drives and not enclosures. The bottomline is I like the end result better.

I can still use FW just not as I once did. I thought about saying on ML (in fact I did until last saturday) but I have two monitors and like the new spaces scheme. I also like having the consistency of my iWorks between my iDevices and my Macs.

It is what it is.....I hate having my hand forced but I like where I ended up.

Yes the ejection issue was fixed however they did not fix external drives not going to sleep when Mac goes to sleep. So anybody running a home network with an external drive can no longer use Thunderbolt nor Firewire since Apple gave birth to Mavericks.

Sorry, Promise Pegasus TB and TB2 drives sleep and wake correctly...