Ejected LaCie 1big Dock constantly spinning up and down when MacBook Air is asleep...

[panta]

I was wondering whether anyone has any advice for me:

I have a LaCie 1big Dock always connected to my MacBook Air M2 and I mostly keep it ejected it as it's only used for archiving.

This all works fine until my Mac goes to sleep and shortly thereafter the drive will spin up for a little while and then down again. This will repeat over and over again every few minutes and is a real pain. I think sometimes the Mac also remounts the drive but not always.

Powering the drive off completely or disconnecting it is not an option unfortunately as I use the integrated hub to connect to an external monitor, and to two other drives, including my Time Machine drive which needs to remain on. However, the 1big Dock will behave exactly in the same way even with all other devices unplugged.

I have now set it up so only the displays turn off after a period of inactivity and have checked "prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off". This works but means my Mac never sleeps and is on all the time which is not ideal.

I have searched various forums but my problem is kind of the opposite of what people usually have an issue with, which is that their drives are powering down unexpectedly... but mine is powering up!!

I guess it could be that Power Nap or related processes keep turning the USB ports on and off when the Mac is asleep... maybe for housekeeping and other things... but why is it doing this all through the night? And even when I format the drive and it still is completely empty? In any case, I can find no option to turn off Power Nap on my Mac...

I have tried Jettison but that didn't help and I'm now hoping that there might be some terminal commands or a script or even a shortcut that when run would prevent the Mac from waking up ejected external drives when it is asleep...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have...

 

[MarkC426]

I have a similar behaviour on my 1 Big SSD (but not as regular as yours), but just ignore it.
As my Studio only ever sleeps (never off), there is probably chatter between the two devices.

 

[panta]

I have a similar behaviour on my 1 Big SSD (but not as regular as yours), but just ignore it.
As my Studio only ever sleeps (never off), there is probably chatter between the two devices.

Thanks, Mark, I would if I could but it keeps me from sleeping... the spinning platters are a lot noisier than SSDs... 😁 It also cannot be good for the longevity of the drives... And I don't understand why there should be chatter if the drive is ejected. It should be invisible to the system...

 

[MarkC426]

Not sure then....😕
Have you looked on Lacie support pages?

Can you connect to TB rather than USB on your Mac..?

 

[panta]

Not sure then....😕
Have you looked on Lacie support pages?

Yes, I have to no avail unfortunately and I am connecting via TB. Actually, I think this may be a problem with many if not all external drives... I have an old Iomega platter and a WD Passport which are on USB and they do the same thing...

 

[MarkC426]

Maybe have a read through this

External drive constantly spinning down a… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[panta]

I hadn't seen this. Thank you, Mark. It seems like this is a common problem with Macs and external drives in general since Ventura or maybe earlier. I may just continue to never allow my Mac to go to sleep as this seems to solve the issue for me.