Constant Hard Drive Sleeping with M1

[daveafrank]

I've had issues with hard drives spinning down ever since I got my M1 Max MBP, but now it's becoming almost unbearable. I have "put hard disks to sleep when possible" unchecked but 2 different external hard drives(12TB Sandisk Professional and 12TB WD MyBook) keep spinning down every chance they get. Sometimes less than 2 minutes since I've been accessing data on the disk.

I even tried the app "Keep Drive Spinning" but it doesn't seem to do anything. Running out of ideas here. The drives are connected through my CalDigit Element Hub since I have them connected with USB type A.

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)
Apple M1 Max
32 GB
Mac OS 12.6

 

[haralds]

External USB drives handle sleep in their own firmware. You might want to see, whether there are control programs from these vendors that allow adjustment.

 

[daveafrank]

External USB drives handle sleep in their own firmware. You might want to see, whether there are control programs from these vendors that allow adjustment.

I didn't know that. I'll look into it.

I just find it odd I've never had these issues before I switched to M1 systems(or maybe it was the move to Monterey?). I'm a freelance video editor so I use hundreds of drives per year from various manufacturers and have been shocked how slow accessing files in the finder has been. Even SSDs that I leave constantly attached to my machine will take a few seconds to load the files on the disk when I open them up in the Finder. I've had issues where I open a folder and for the first few seconds it will say its empty with no files...just for them to appear seconds later.

 

[kschendel]

Apparently you aren't the only one having the issue, and there doesn't seem to be a consistent fix. Some people have found some relief by ensuring that the external drives are connected, then rebooting; as long as you don't sleep the computer, the drives stay active. There's also an app called "amphetamine" that has worked for a few people, not all.

Attaching the drives directly to the computer doesn't seem to help.

I'd open an Apple support issue. The more people complain, the more likely that it will get fixed.

 

[Gudi]

Sometimes less than 2 minutes since I've been accessing data on the disk.

Why do you even want to keep the drive spinning, while you don't access it?

 

[Gudi]

I've had issues where I open a folder and for the first few seconds it will say its empty with no files...just for them to appear seconds later.

Maybe you're already too spoiled with how quick the M1 is on its local SSD, that you can't even remember normal file access behavior?

 

[kschendel]

Maybe you're already too spoiled with how quick the M1 is on its local SSD, that you can't even remember normal file access behavior?

You'll note OP mentioned SSD's, and there is a delay there as well. USB wake-up is not instantaneous, nor even fast. I think he is seeing a real issue.

And you want to keep a hard drive spinning because spin-up takes several seconds as opposed to a few milliseconds for a regular access.

 

[Gudi]

You'll note OP mentioned SSD's, and there is a delay there as well. USB wake-up is not instantaneous, nor even fast. I think he is seeing a real issue.

And you want to keep a hard drive spinning because spin-up takes several seconds as opposed to a few milliseconds for a regular access.

Would you go to a horse and ask for more than 1 horse power? Spin-up time is a staple of spinning drives. They are not supposed to spin continuously. And reading the directory tree of a 12 TB hard drive might actually take some time.

SSDs have no spin-up time, but they need to be mounted. And in an environment with two giant external hard drives behind a USB hub, the Finder might wait for other file I/O operations to finish first. I doubt that the SSD makes problems, when it's the only thing connected to a Mac.

 

[kschendel]

Would you go to a horse and ask for more than 1 horse power? Spin-up time is a staple of spinning drives. They are not supposed to spin continuously. And reading the directory tree of a 12 TB hard drive might actually take some time.

SSDs have no spin-up time, but they need to be mounted. And in an environment with two giant external hard drives behind a USB hub, the Finder might wait for other file I/O operations to finish first. I doubt that the SSD makes problems, when it's the only thing connected to a Mac.

On the off-chance that you are serious and not trolling, no, hard drive access is not meant to include spin-up time, except maybe once after a suitable period of inactivity. I would consider maybe an hour or so to be suitable. A spin-down after a minute or two is not only not acceptable, it's harder on the drive than just staying active.

Yes, hard drives are supposed to spin continuously. They only spin down because it saves power. A spin-down, spin-up cycle is an undesirable event from the standpoint of the drive; it's stressful for the motor and head loading is perilous compared to head-idle. I have no active hard drives left here, but when I did, there were at least a dozen that had been spinning continuously for years. At least one hard drive failure was traced to excessive stop/start cycles due to an accidental mis-configuration.

SSD's don't spin, of course, but if the mac is asking for a USB reconnect after just a minute or two of inactivity, that's going to slow things down. I think we can give the OP credit for being able to tell the difference between a normal finder response and a slow one.

 

[Gudi]

I think we can give the OP credit for being able to tell the difference between a normal finder response and a slow one.

Absolutely not, he's on an M1 Max with 400GB/s RAM and an internal SSD that probably reads 2.5GB/s? He's no longer used to wait for anything. Everything just happens instantaneous. Any kind of delay feels absolutely horrendous and out of order. Just like I freak out when I suddenly hear the fans of my M1 iMac. It makes noise? Something must be broken! We were all used to a lot more heat, noise and delay. And we accepted it as normal. Now it feels unacceptable. I too hate my external hard drive. It sounds unpleasant like fingernails scrapping on a blackboard.

 

[kschendel]

Absolutely not, he's on an M1 Max with 400GB/s RAM and an internal SSD that probably reads 2.5GB/s? He's no longer used to wait for anything. Everything just happens instantaneous. Any kind of delay feels absolutely horrendous and out of order. Just like I freak out when I suddenly hear the fans of my M1 iMac. It makes noise? Something must be broken! We were all used to a lot more heat, noise and delay. And we accepted it as normal. Now it feels unacceptable. I too hate my external hard drive. It sounds unpleasant like fingernails scrapping on a blackboard.

That's just silly. A USB-connected SSD feels just as fast as an internal one. (Those sequential read numbers are almost entirely irrelevant to anything in ordinary usage.) If OP is feeling a delay, there's a problem.

Please stop trying to claim that everything is fine when it's obviously not. Hard drives shouldn't spin down after just a minute or two of inactivity; not when drive sleep has been un-checked.

 

[Gudi]

Hard drives shouldn't spin down after just a minute or two of inactivity; not when drive sleep has been un-checked.

As far as I can tell this checkbox doesn't even exist anymore in macOS Monterey on M1 Macs. They are all SSD anyway and who said the setting was meant to effect external drives to begin with? Reading on the internet there are as many or more people complaining that their external hard drive keeps spinning when it shouldn't. So there are at least two opinions what the desired behavior is.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I have a Mac Studio M1 Max with five 3.5" hard drives connected via USB…three of them ON all the time.

I experienced the lags created when the drives had stopped spinning. Quite annoying, of course. These drives used to be internal ones on my Hackintosh. I will wean myself off spinners over time.

What is working for me is the Amphetamine app (mentioned in post #4 above). The setting in Amphetamine is at Preferences>Drive Alive, where you add the spinner HDs to the list. I also have Preferences>General>Launch Amphetamine at login checked.

Amphetamine is available for free in the macOS App Store app.

 

[daveafrank]

Absolutely not, he's on an M1 Max with 400GB/s RAM and an internal SSD that probably reads 2.5GB/s? He's no longer used to wait for anything. Everything just happens instantaneous. Any kind of delay feels absolutely horrendous and out of order. Just like I freak out when I suddenly hear the fans of my M1 iMac. It makes noise? Something must be broken! We were all used to a lot more heat, noise and delay. And we accepted it as normal. Now it feels unacceptable. I too hate my external hard drive. It sounds unpleasant like fingernails scrapping on a blackboard.

Cool troll bro. You're uninformed and unhelpful.

 

[daveafrank]

There's also an app called "amphetamine" that has worked for a few people, not all.

What is working for me is the Amphetamine app (mentioned in post #4 above). The setting in Amphetamine is at Preferences>Drive Alive, where you add the spinner HDs to the list. I also have Preferences>General>Launch Amphetamine at login checked.

Amphetamine is available for free in the macOS App Store app.

This worked! Thanks!!

 

[tmoerel]

I have a Mac Studio M1 Max with five 3.5" hard drives connected via USB…three of them ON all the time.

I experienced the lags created when the drives had stopped spinning. Quite annoying, of course. These drives used to be internal ones on my Hackintosh. I will wean myself off spinners over time.

What is working for me is the Amphetamine app (mentioned in post #4 above). The setting in Amphetamine is at Preferences>Drive Alive, where you add the spinner HDs to the list. I also have Preferences>General>Launch Amphetamine at login checked.

Amphetamine is available for free in the macOS App Store app.

Exactly what I am using. Works well!

 

[bobcomer]

And you want to keep a hard drive spinning because spin-up takes several seconds as opposed to a few milliseconds for a regular access.

And hard drives last MUCH MUCH longer if they never spin down. (Spin up is the most vulnerable time for hard drives, that's when it will fail.)

 

[teknodude]

I've noticed that weird behavior. Whenever I stop browsing a folder off the hard drive, it will spin down. Once I change folders, the hard drive starts spinning up again. It's almost like Macos built some power saving or time out feature in there. These are just WD black HD that are installed in an enclosure.

 

[Coluch]

Thanks to the users who suggested Amphetamine utility. Very powerful, and simple to use once you set up your preferences. It works, and it's free!

My external 10GB Lacie (connected directly with USB-C) was spinning down within 20-30 seconds of last access. Editing in Premiere would freeze / beach ball cursor CONSTANTLY for 10-15 seconds while spinning up the drive. Plenty of people posting this problem on Apple forums and others. This has not happened on my two Intel Macs. Could be Mojave, could be M1 hardware... but definitely a workflow crippling bug.

 

[keiller84]

Also finding this same problem (only since recent update to 13.2.1) with my Lacie 2Big Dock into an M1 Max MBP. Is there still no other fix besides Amphetamine (which seems to be hit and miss).

 

[BrianBaughn]

Is there still no other fix besides Amphetamine (which seems to be hit and miss).

Well, one could create a script/app type thing to do the same thing that Amphetamine does, I suppose.

Not sure if I'd describe it as "hit and miss".

 

[VelNZ]

I've got a Mac Pro 2023 and also had internal hard drives spinning down constantly which is bad for them, and also annoying in that some software lags for 5 seconds during the spin up.

I've found something though, the drives keep spinning non stop after a reboot, and even after sleeping and waking as I expect and want. HOWEVER, if I pull out my external monitor while the computer is sleeping, it briefly wakes up and spins up drives then goes back to sleep and spins them down. But then, when I wake it up again and plug the monitor back in, macOS keeps spinning them down constantly after that and only a reboot fixes it.

It seems like macOS has a bug that essentially ignores the "Put hard disks to sleep" setting if a monitor/USB peripheral is removed while sleeping.

 

[bobcomer]

*Deleted* redundant, didn't notice it was an old thread.

 

[bobcomer]

*deleted*

 

[name99]

I've had issues with hard drives spinning down ever since I got my M1 Max MBP, but now it's becoming almost unbearable. I have "put hard disks to sleep when possible" unchecked but 2 different external hard drives(12TB Sandisk Professional and 12TB WD MyBook) keep spinning down every chance they get. Sometimes less than 2 minutes since I've been accessing data on the disk.

I even tried the app "Keep Drive Spinning" but it doesn't seem to do anything. Running out of ideas here. The drives are connected through my CalDigit Element Hub since I have them connected with USB type A.

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)
Apple M1 Max
32 GB
Mac OS 12.6

Update the OS.
I had this as a serious problem when I got my M2 mini (running 13.something). It got better with successive updates, and with the current OS ( 13.4.1(c) ) it just doesn't happen any more.