I've got the exact same problem as all of you. Mac Studio with a USB3 5 bay enclosure that was spinning down every 45 seconds if it wasn't accessed. I have been going back and forth with the manufacturer blaming their hardware but now it appears to be Apple's issue. I've installed Amphetamine and we will see if that works. Super frustrating that so many people are having this issue.
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External USB Hard Drive spins up/down all the time
- Thread starter Auream
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Yeah confirming as well this is still present in 13.2.1
I have a pretty ancient G-Drive from the days of Thunderbolt 2 I believe. It also has a USB connection and that's how I use the drive. I mitigate the spin-down by having a cron job that kicks off a program to write a tiny amount of data to a file on the disk. Normally I run that little program every 5 minutes via cron and it's enough to keep the drive alive. (The program itself writes a byte of data every 2 seconds or so for about 15 iterations.)
I'm on an M1 Max MS and what I've noticed is that if I happen to eject the drive and then remount it, the drive tends to spin down even sooner than it does when the drive is online after the machine first boots -- despite the keep-alive program running every 5 mins. This doesn't happen all the time and I'm not sure at all what the circumstances are to make it spin down sooner than usual.
I have a pretty ancient G-Drive from the days of Thunderbolt 2 I believe. It also has a USB connection and that's how I use the drive. I mitigate the spin-down by having a cron job that kicks off a program to write a tiny amount of data to a file on the disk. Normally I run that little program every 5 minutes via cron and it's enough to keep the drive alive. (The program itself writes a byte of data every 2 seconds or so for about 15 iterations.)
I'm on an M1 Max MS and what I've noticed is that if I happen to eject the drive and then remount it, the drive tends to spin down even sooner than it does when the drive is online after the machine first boots -- despite the keep-alive program running every 5 mins. This doesn't happen all the time and I'm not sure at all what the circumstances are to make it spin down sooner than usual.
This problem seems to have got worse with recent update to Ventura 13.2.1 - previous OS I was having no issues with a Lacie 2Big 40Tb Dock into my M1 Max MBP.
Only workaround in meantime seems to be using Amphetamine and setting Drive Alive to 60s. If anyone else is also using it and having luck with longer timing then would be good to know - still annoying hearing the drive doing some sort of activity every minute when previously it was silent.
Only workaround in meantime seems to be using Amphetamine and setting Drive Alive to 60s. If anyone else is also using it and having luck with longer timing then would be good to know - still annoying hearing the drive doing some sort of activity every minute when previously it was silent.
Scratch that - seemed to be working for a few minutes and now drive is going back to sleeping every 30-45 seconds of inactivity. Infuriating.
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Reposting FWIW, I turned off "put HDs to sleep when possible", figuring it's better to have the drives spinning all the time than going up and down. In my experience they now sleep when the computer sleeps (though occasionally spin up during TM backups).
Also, I used the HD's bundled software to disable any built-in sleep settings in case they conflicted with macOS.
Still not a total solution, but as close as I can get for now.
Also, I used the HD's bundled software to disable any built-in sleep settings in case they conflicted with macOS.
Still not a total solution, but as close as I can get for now.
Is this an issue that happens to all people 100% of the time with external hard drives and Ventura? Or do external hard drives work perfectly for some? Apple support is blissfully unaware of this issue, which makes me guess external hard drives work fine for most. Maybe comparing our exact setups would help us figure this out?
I have this problem too, m1 max. Works fine if rebooting until sleep, then it's going into sleep after like 40-60 seconds. Over and over... Happens on ALL my external drives, it's not related to a particular brand of drive. I was so sad finding this thread, learning that this has been an issue for so long and still isn't fixed. DAMN.
Good point. I'm using Al dente, will try to uninstall it and see if that helps.
Did you see any difference. Since there is such a staggering amount of users I highly doubt that they all had Al Dente installed, but it was something I thought about.
Is there really NO OTHER FIX than using Amphetamine or something similar writing to the disk frequently? This is bonkers. Talked to Apple too and was only given bs advice like using another user account or what not.
Hello,
I have the same problem with a Lacie 2big.
I have a usb stremdeck that turned on and off at the same time as HDD.
I just tried something that seems to work so far.
I enabled the option that prevents activity from suspending when the monitor is off. Which is in Monitor -> Advanced.
It's been 48 hours now that I haven't heard spin down and up.
I have the same problem with a Lacie 2big.
I have a usb stremdeck that turned on and off at the same time as HDD.
I just tried something that seems to work so far.
I enabled the option that prevents activity from suspending when the monitor is off. Which is in Monitor -> Advanced.
It's been 48 hours now that I haven't heard spin down and up.
I think the problem might be related to M1 hardware architecture. I had this thing occuring when I switched from my late 2015 Intel 27" iMac to Mac Studio (M1Max) , with the same external hard-drives connected (G-Drive, Usb-C, 6TB)
I noticed that it's happening only during a "wake from sleep" scenario.
1. If the external HDD is on and connected when Mac goes to sleep -> HDD goes to sleep. After that , when Mac wakes from sleep, HDD wakes up and the whole ordeal is starting (hdd goes back-and-forth to and from sleep every 15-20 seconds by itself)
2. During a cold-boot, when the Mac boots up with the HDD connected ... everything works perfectly fine.
It's something related to sleep and wake from sleep. Basically I have to reset my Mac (cold-boot) every time when it wakes back from sleep to avoid this crazy ordeal. So I don't put it to sleep anymore, I just shut it down.
This stupid thing has been going for a long time for a lot of users (all kind of external HDDs). Of course Apple will deny it ...
It happened on Monterey .. still happening on Ventura.
I noticed that it's happening only during a "wake from sleep" scenario.
1. If the external HDD is on and connected when Mac goes to sleep -> HDD goes to sleep. After that , when Mac wakes from sleep, HDD wakes up and the whole ordeal is starting (hdd goes back-and-forth to and from sleep every 15-20 seconds by itself)
2. During a cold-boot, when the Mac boots up with the HDD connected ... everything works perfectly fine.
It's something related to sleep and wake from sleep. Basically I have to reset my Mac (cold-boot) every time when it wakes back from sleep to avoid this crazy ordeal. So I don't put it to sleep anymore, I just shut it down.
This stupid thing has been going for a long time for a lot of users (all kind of external HDDs). Of course Apple will deny it ...
It happened on Monterey .. still happening on Ventura.
MistD wrote:
"It's something related to sleep and wake from sleep. Basically I have to reset my Mac (cold-boot) every time when it wakes back from sleep to avoid this crazy ordeal. So I don't put it to sleep anymore, I just shut it down."
May I make a suggestion?
There's a "third way" you ought to try.
Don't put it to sleep
and
Don't shut it down.
Instead...
When you're not going to be using it for a while (say, an hour or two), put THE DISPLAY to sleep, and leave the Studio "awake, but idling".
You could set it up with a screen saver that activates when you shove the pointer into a designated corner (I use the upper right corner).
The display will go to sleep.
You can set a password to require a password to unlock the display.
This works for me (I'm using a 2018 Mini).
Another way that's even more basic:
If you're going to be away from the desk, reach forward and TURN OFF the display.
Then just walk away.
I do that too, sometimes.
"It's something related to sleep and wake from sleep. Basically I have to reset my Mac (cold-boot) every time when it wakes back from sleep to avoid this crazy ordeal. So I don't put it to sleep anymore, I just shut it down."
May I make a suggestion?
There's a "third way" you ought to try.
Don't put it to sleep
and
Don't shut it down.
Instead...
When you're not going to be using it for a while (say, an hour or two), put THE DISPLAY to sleep, and leave the Studio "awake, but idling".
You could set it up with a screen saver that activates when you shove the pointer into a designated corner (I use the upper right corner).
The display will go to sleep.
You can set a password to require a password to unlock the display.
This works for me (I'm using a 2018 Mini).
Another way that's even more basic:
If you're going to be away from the desk, reach forward and TURN OFF the display.
Then just walk away.
I do that too, sometimes.
That’s a good idea 👍 I will try it for a while.
This external HDD situation got me thinking about going the NAS route.
I simply can’t stand it anymore
Was thinking about external SSDs but they are too expensive for using them as “hot” archive storage
Also a NAS (although overkill for me) has some other advantages (no noise in the room, cloud backup, data scrubbing etc.)
As another data point I'm testing Ventura out on a separate partition on my Studio Ultra. Under Monterey it has the issue which is mitigated with Amphetamine, but under Ventura 13.2.1 it does not happen at all.
Mac Studio Ultra
OWC ThunderBay4 (Thunderbolt 2)
Apple Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adapter
Mac Studio Ultra
OWC ThunderBay4 (Thunderbolt 2)
Apple Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adapter
I've been analyzing some other stuff and found something related. If running a USB device connect/disconnect logger of one kind or the other, for example using Hammerspoon. I have found that the storage devices (primarily, maybe a network USB interface as well) actually disconnects and reconnects 0-1 seconds later. This also seems to happen ONLY after sleep and go back to normal after a reboot.
Maybe this issue isn't just the sleep command to the drive, maybe there's something wonky about the whole handling of USB devices post sleep.
I should add that the reconnects I've found drives doing doing will NOT cause an eject or unmount of the volume and it seems to have no relevance to whatever is going on. Copying files keeps going etc. But it still is WEIRD.
Maybe this issue isn't just the sleep command to the drive, maybe there's something wonky about the whole handling of USB devices post sleep.
I should add that the reconnects I've found drives doing doing will NOT cause an eject or unmount of the volume and it seems to have no relevance to whatever is going on. Copying files keeps going etc. But it still is WEIRD.
Yep! It’s my experience for the past year or so. It’s how it behaves with USB storage (hdds in my case) post sleep.
I read somewhere that can be related to some architecture bug regarding energy efficiency within the M1 chip itself and Thunderbolt / USB bus.
It’s strange that after a cold-boot the issue seems to go away, only happens post-sleeping.
The “Prevent computer from sleeping …” setting was moved to Settings->Display->Advanced.
I started having similar issues when I moved from my 15 inch i7 MacBook Pro (late 2018) to a new 16 inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro. Both my old USB-3 hard drive and then my new USB-c sandisk SSD experienced things like all describing but where it hit me was that something (I am suspecting the subject of this thread) would cause my hourly Time machine backups to fail. I had the usual, hard drive never sleep on power cable, and such. I usually had the screen to sleep also. But the failure with something about locked files would come up but when opened screen within minute the SSD as well as the old USB HD would spin up and Time Machine made a successful backup. I even tried no screen sleep but just screen saver same error. BUT when I turned off the screen lock completely then my hourly Time Machine backups worked perfectly. Anyone notice issues like this?
Before turning off Lock Screen I got this message:
“Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked.”
but with screen lock off no error and backups complete I am suspecting that screen lock on my new M2 does something perhaps letting my SSD (and previous USB-2/3 HD) sleep? And the backup fail. Maybe this is different issue but sounds related?
UPDATE: 13.3.1 fixed my problem with this not sure if it was same issue as many report here. I installed 13.3.1 and then turned my screen lock back on and Time Machine and my new external sandisk 4 TB SSD works just fine now with hourly backup and my screen lock is back on. Only possible solution is that this update fixed the Apple Watch unlock not working. Maybe the code for this also altered whatever in screen lock was giving me problems. It now works fine with watch or fingerprint when watch is not on wrist.
Before turning off Lock Screen I got this message:
“Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked.”
but with screen lock off no error and backups complete I am suspecting that screen lock on my new M2 does something perhaps letting my SSD (and previous USB-2/3 HD) sleep? And the backup fail. Maybe this is different issue but sounds related?
UPDATE: 13.3.1 fixed my problem with this not sure if it was same issue as many report here. I installed 13.3.1 and then turned my screen lock back on and Time Machine and my new external sandisk 4 TB SSD works just fine now with hourly backup and my screen lock is back on. Only possible solution is that this update fixed the Apple Watch unlock not working. Maybe the code for this also altered whatever in screen lock was giving me problems. It now works fine with watch or fingerprint when watch is not on wrist.
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