External backup drive doesn't turn off after Sleep?

non of my external hd's ever turned on with my imac

this was from lion to mavericks

maybe you should check it with LAcie if they support such a feature maybe they know why it no longer works

I too am having similar issues but with my ministacks. My ministacks would go to sleep with all previous versions of OSX, excluding Lion as I never used Lion. The ministack would go to sleep if the Mac has not read/or written to it after a certain amount of time, not just when the Mac goes to sleep. Most likely it works just as stated above with a voltage comparison.

OWC informed me that I had to have the USB cable connected for that feature to work but I have not had the ministack on my iMac plugged in USB for some years now and the sleep mechanism has always worked. As a mater of fact the ministack went to sleep with just firewire while I was on the phone with the OWC tech support but it only slept for about 30 sec.

This must be a Mavericks issue. I have tested this on two diff iMac and 2 dif MBPs. The drive just does not sleep with mavericks.

I guess that we're now going to be forced to equip all our externally attached drives with server grade drives as they will be running non stop.

If it is a Firewire drive, then failure to sleep the drive is a known problem with Mavericks. I would expect apple to fix this with 10.9.1. USB drives are sleeping from all reports.

I got notice from OWC that they just tested my drive with the latest Mavericks release OS X 10.9 (13A603) and the drive failed to sleep via Firewire. They told me that they were trying to see if they can fix the issue on their end, but as "ssls6" stated it appears as it is a Mavericks issue and hopefully Apples next 10.9.1 or 10.9.2 release would fix the issue.

So it would definitely be worth contacting Lacie to see what they can discover.

10.9.1 doesn't seem to have fixed this. At least I can now use TimeMachine again to back up to the external FireWire drive. It doesn't seem to be restricted to a particular manufacturer's Firewire drive, since I several different ones none of which spin down when the computer goes to sleep.

I've sent a bug-report to Apple Feedback.

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

They don't follow every post on the forums so it never hurts to tell them directly when something's wrong. I hope they fix this.

This is a known issue to Apple for a while now. Firewire and Thunderbolt external drives will not go to sleep, even if ejected the drives will continue to spin and possibly overheat. The option is to use the USB port since those are not affected. Some of those larger external drives my only have a thunderbolt and no USB hook up at all, so in the case you will need to turn off the external drive manually after ejecting it.

There is also a sleep issue with the USB drives if your external drive is encrypted. If it is then that drive will not sleep either even if you use USB. Mavericks has several other bugs even one big one with SSL that could comprimise security if your on a public wifi network.

Mavericks 10.9.2 beta is out but when will it be ready for us to get it is unkown. Will it address the Firewire/Thunderbolt external drive not sleeping issue unkown. I am guessing the big thing it will address is the SSL issue.

Should of stayed with Mountain Lion is all I can think of.

Same issue here - now with 10.9.2. My Lacie D2 is continually on, even though it is only used for backup. I ejected it, but as soon as the iMac woke again it powered the drive - but it isn't visible on Finder any longer. I don't even know whether the back-up will work (I know I could try, but don't have time right now).

The other issue I had was my other drive (iomega eGo) was frequently ejecting for no obvious reason. I had tried everything I could to change settings, but hadn't yet found this and other threads pointing to issues with Firewire. If I had, I may have saved the drive - it finally failed yesterday and I don't know whether it was from being ejected incorrectly or from overheating (or something else).

It seems as though I will have to change my drive connection from Firewire to USB2.0, hopefully only temporarily because it is a big step backwards.

Unfortunately I have two drives that will not sleep when the computer sleeps - this has been since Mavericks. Up until then they did sleep. I've filed bug reports but so far...

Looks like Apple might of given up an a fast resolution on this issue. They called me to help me change back to Mountain Lion. I did not have time to do that at the moment they called me but this can't be a good sign. I have some time next week so I will be calling them back to go back to Mountain Lion.

Last I heard it has something to do with the "Wake For Network Access". Everytime drives are going to go to sleep this keeps it awake even if you do not have it checked marked to do so. Who knows, the bottom line is that after working with one of the Apple Tech guys for a couple of months thay have yet to find a solution for me other than going back to Mountain Lion.

No clue when 10.9.3 is coming out, hopefully it will fix some of the other bugs people are having with Mavericks such as file transfer on network drives locking or crashing Finder, trouble with periphials, trouble with kernels slowing down the Macs, ect, ect. Mavericks IMHO was not ready for prime time and the free offer just made us all free beta testers.

REMEMBER: You do have FREE 90 day support on OS upgrades even if your warranty is expired.

Just call Apple Care at 1-800-277-5322 with your Mac Serial Number and ask to speak

with a senoir advisor about your issue with 10.9.2.

.

It's now January 2016, and the Sleep bug in OS X is still not fixed. Yes, I too joined the rest of you in filing yet another bug report with Apple. But since Apple has long since replaced FireWire on their hardware, it's clear they simply DON'T CARE. And since OWC is unable to provide a solution, the only feasible options are:

1) Power up the drive manually, then do your thing (TM backup, etc.), then eject the drive and manually power it off, OR

2) Use USB instead, which will be slower USB2 on older Macs — slower than our preferred choice of FireWire 800.

But even when using USB on OWC's Mercury Elite Pro external drive enclosures, I find that, in El Capitan anyway, the drive Sleeps (spins-down) and Wakes (spins-up) more often than it should. And no, I am not seeing that spin-up when I am accessing Open/Save dialogs either. It seems almost random. Not as bad as the FW800 cable where the drive NEVER sleeps, but still disconcerting. The really sad part is, nothing was broken prior to 10.9, which means Apple should be able to just "go back to the way things were before" quite easily and solve this problem once and for all.