Constant Hard Drive Sleeping with M1

[richardallan]

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".

I have been using Amphetamine for quite a while & it's been really good until now. It stopped working at the latest OS update. I contacted the developer & have now tried a beta version but it's not working either. In fact I had to uninstall it because it was causing other problems. So, there doesn't currently seem to be a solution for a lot of people for their external drives spinning down or going to sleep. I'm running 13.5.1.

 

[ranjan2001]

I have been using Amphetamine for quite a while & it's been really good until now. It stopped working at the latest OS update. I contacted the developer & have now tried a beta version but it's not working either. In fact I had to uninstall it because it was causing other problems. So, there doesn't currently seem to be a solution for a lot of people for their external drives spinning down or going to sleep. I'm running 13.5.1.

I have been facing similar problems on latest 12.6.8 even after using Amphetamine for quite a while as of now I am manually unmounting the disk when not using it.
Its definitely Mac OS problem which apple is not willing to fix since last 3 years now.

 

[richardallan]

I have been facing similar problems on latest 12.6.8 even after using Amphetamine for quite a while as of now I am manually unmounting the disk when not using it.
Its definitely Mac OS problem which apple is not willing to fix since last 3 years now.

I don't know about that. I have only been having problems the last couple of weeks...

 

[dia3olik]

I think it's due to the fact the world is switching to flash based storage which doesn't suffer at all the aggressive power saving features, this is part of Apple mission to decrease energy usage and also to preserve battery life/wear imho.

After many unsuccessful tries (including Amphetamine), I "solved" this migrating all my platter based storage solutions to archival only.

 

[richardallan]

After many unsuccessful tries (including Amphetamine), I "solved" this migrating all my platter based storage solutions to archival only.

Yes, soon my only spinning drives will be for backup. But it can be expensive if you need a lot of storage.

 

[dredlew]

Yes, soon my only spinning drives will be for backup. But it can be expensive if you need a lot of storage.

Backup has the same issues, given that you always have your backup drive attached to do 1-hour interval TimeMachine backups. However, my backup drive doesn't spin up/down just for the backup. It randomly does so several times during that 1hr and also whenever I access files on my external SSD through a file selection window of an app. It is really annoying, especially because I have 18TB server drives that are inherently noisy during spin-up/down.

OTOH, I also can't get my Mac Studio to properly sleep when I tell it to. It will randomly wake up and of course, spin up the attached drives. This is due to the multitude of background services that Apple has built in, like "Find My" and the like. The only way to turn these off is through the terminal but that completely disables them. I want these services to work when the computer is turned on but I want the services to stop nagging when the computer is asleep. There seems to be no way to achieve that. It is frustrating, to say the least.

 

[name99]

Backup has the same issues, given that you always have your backup drive attached to do 1-hour interval TimeMachine backups. However, my backup drive doesn't spin up/down just for the backup. It randomly does so several times during that 1hr and also whenever I access files on my external SSD through a file selection window of an app. It is really annoying, especially because I have 18TB server drives that are inherently noisy during spin-up/down.

OTOH, I also can't get my Mac Studio to properly sleep when I tell it to. It will randomly wake up and of course, spin up the attached drives. This is due to the multitude of background services that Apple has built in, like "Find My" and the like. The only way to turn these off is through the terminal but that completely disables them. I want these services to work when the computer is turned on but I want the services to stop nagging when the computer is asleep. There seems to be no way to achieve that. It is frustrating, to say the least.

Why do you care? Your phone never goes to sleep, in the sense of a PC or Intel style mac, so why would you expect your Apple Silicon mac to do so?
Sleep states, hibernation, and all the rest of it are not states of nature, they were technical solutions adopted at a certain point in time, and they go away when better solutions appear.

 

[dredlew]

Why do you care? Your phone never goes to sleep, in the sense of a PC or Intel style mac, so why would you expect your Apple Silicon mac to do so?
Sleep states, hibernation, and all the rest of it are not states of nature, they were technical solutions adopted at a certain point in time, and they go away when better solutions appear.

Did you miss the part about server drives or that in general, it's detrimental to spinners to constantly spin up & down?

Not sure why you would not see the difference between a phone, a communication device that needs to receive communications/notifications, and a computer. The computer may respond to communications if I allow it to but I turned off waking for network access for a reason. The computer is supposed to sleep until I specifically wake it. Does your TV or receiver just randomly wake up from standby mode? No, it doesn't. The computer shouldn't either and it didn't use to until Apple decided to override the user's settings. The very settings that Apple provides the user with, so why provide them at all if they just get ignored?

 

[dia3olik]

BTW I wrote archival for a reason, archival is not a backup solution.

Time Machine now basically requires SSDs of course since it's using APFS and this aggressive power management algo.
As I said I only use hard drives for archival: turn on hdd, copy data, shutting down hdd.

This is the only solution long term unfortunately.

In fact there is another major problem: many performing NVMe drives inside Thunderbolt or USB-C enclosures draw almost the same power of 18/20TB enterprise drives and I've personally checked...SSDs NEVER go to sleep on Ventura, they usually draw 4-6Whr even when idle and even after a while!

Luckily there shouldn't be additional mechanical wear but it's NOT good for the environment nor for our bills.

 

[Obioban]

BTW I wrote archival for a reason, archival is not a backup solution.

Time Machine now basically requires SSDs of course since it's using APFS and this aggressive power management algo.
As I said I only use hard drives for archival: turn on hdd, copy data, shutting down hdd.

This is the only solution long term unfortunately.

In fact there is another major problem: many performing NVMe drives inside Thunderbolt or USB-C enclosures draw almost the same power of 18/20TB enterprise drives and I've personally checked...SSDs NEVER go to sleep on Ventura, they usually draw 4-6Whr even when idle and even after a while!

Luckily there shouldn't be additional mechanical wear but it's NOT good for the environment nor for our bills.

Is it required that you use APFS these days? Historically I avoid using APFS for platter drives (which at this point I only use for Plex and Time Machine).

 

[name99]

Is it required that you use APFS these days? Historically I avoid using APFS for platter drives (which at this point I only use for Plex and Time Machine).

I run APFS on my spinning hard drives (mostly, but not all, backup) and have no complaints.
Certainly (with Ventura) backups to APFS, even on a full hard drive (ie every backup has to also delete some material) are astonishingly fast compared to Time Machine on JHFS+.

Likewise no complaints about these drives supposedly dying early from supposedly excess wake-ups as claimed by dredlew.

 

[dredlew]

Backup has the same issues, given that you always have your backup drive attached to do 1-hour interval TimeMachine backups. However, my backup drive doesn't spin up/down just for the backup. It randomly does so several times during that 1hr and also whenever I access files on my external SSD through a file selection window of an app. It is really annoying, especially because I have 18TB server drives that are inherently noisy during spin-up/down.

I finally got it to stop the spin down/up of the external drives. The culprit was the Finder. I had to turn off the drives showing up in the sidebar, that seems to fix the drives going to sleep.

However, it only works if the computer doesn’t go to sleep. Once it goes to sleep and I wake it up again, the drives will go to sleep again and wake up randomly. Since computer sleep doesn’t work for me anyway, I usually just shut it down because the constant waking from sleep and the drives spinning up drives me insane.

 

[Coluch]

I finally got it to stop the spin down/up of the external drives. The culprit was the Finder. I had to turn off the drives showing up in the sidebar, that seems to fix the drives going to sleep.

However, it only works if the computer doesn’t go to sleep. Once it goes to sleep and I wake it up again, the drives will go to sleep again and wake up randomly. Since computer sleep doesn’t work for me anyway, I usually just shut it down because the constant waking from sleep and the drives spinning up drives me insane.

Same on a Mac Studio with external USB-C HDDs. Ejecting with Finder (or unmounting with Disk Utility) seems to stop constant wakes & immediate sleeps, but only until I put the computer to sleep, at which point the unwanted wake & sleep cycles resume.

I've resorted to always physically disconnecting my external HDD, and reconnecting when I need it, with Amphetamine running to keep it from being unusable. I'm staying on Ventura specifically to keep Amphetamine working at this point.

 

[richardallan]

I have found that Amphetamine is not working in Sonoma. I have tried contacting the developer by several means but haven't had a reply as yet.

I just uninstalled then reinstalled Amphetamine & it opens now but if I select Enable Triggers in the Settings menu the app quits. Triggers is the main use I have for it.

 

[vigilant]

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

Someone mentioned the enclosure firmware, which is what I would tend to think that it is.

Another thing though is spinning rust drives do have a higher failure rate compared, and this sounds like maybe the drive maybe dying?

 

[harryboy85]

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

Up until recently I've been having the same issue, which has been incredibly frustrating.

Just recently I discovered the issue was that I was putting my mac book pro to sleep each night, rather than actually shutting it down properly.

Not sure why, but something about putting the computer to sleep seems to mess with the "never put hard disks to sleep" option working properly.

So now I just do a full power down of my computer each night - and I haven't had an issue since... the hard drives stay awake and active throughout the day.

 

[Coluch]

…something about putting the computer to sleep seems to mess with the "never put hard disks to sleep" option working properly.

This has been well established as part of the problem. The issue recurs after a sleep/wake cycle.

 

[me55]

I finally got it to stop the spin down/up of the external drives. The culprit was the Finder. I had to turn off the drives showing up in the sidebar, that seems to fix the drives going to sleep.

However, it only works if the computer doesn’t go to sleep. Once it goes to sleep and I wake it up again, the drives will go to sleep again and wake up randomly. Since computer sleep doesn’t work for me anyway, I usually just shut it down because the constant waking from sleep and the drives spinning up drives me insane.

Hiding or showing the drives in the Finder sidebar makes no difference here, but the system sleep does: System freshly booted and the USB drives stay running. Once the system was in standby the drives go to sleep all the time.

EDIT: Both test drives (WD & Seagate) when formatted in APFS go to sleep all the time, once reformatted to HFS+ they stay running.

I've sent off a bug report to Apple, maybe others should do the same: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

This reminds me of the Windows 8 days where Microsoft introduced a USB power management function and it broke a lot of USB devices unless you disabled that new feature in the registry: https://www.eightforums.com/threads/power-options-add-or-remove-usb-3-link-power-mangement.50276/