External drives spins up even when all volumes are unmounted

[Mistercharlie]

I have a Toshiba Flex drive for backups, with a few partitions. I keep it connected, but with all volumes unmounted. The problem is, whenever my Mac mini wakes from sleep, the drive spins up.

I have another old 3.5-inch drive hooked up too (a WD of some kind, but with just a SATA-USB adapter attached to the bare drive), amd this never spins up except on boot.

I use Mountain app to keep the volumes unmounted.

 

[Mistercharlie]

Is there any way to stop the drive spinning up when the Mac dark-wakes during the night?

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestion (and yes, it's intended as a serious reply):
Shut down everything at night.
Then nothing can "wake up" ... not the Mac, not the drives... nothing.

 

[Mistercharlie]

My suggestion (and yes, it's intended as a serious reply):
Shut down everything at night.
Then nothing can "wake up" ... not the Mac, not the drives... nothing.

I don't mind doing that, but I already have one drive that manages to stay sleeping until it's needed, so I wonder, why can't this new one do the same?

Plus it's an M1 Mac mini, so it uses almost zero power while sleeping.