"Put hard disks to sleep" Energy Saver settings disappearing

[howdytom]

I noticed a strange behaviour in macOS Ventura. I have unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" in System Preferences > Energy Saver settings. This morning, the menu item show up just fine. This afternoon I reopened the Energy Saver again and the preference item disappeared! By chance I made a screenshot before and after. I never experienced such a behaviour in macOS.

Just curious. Are you able to see "Put hard disks to sleep" settings on your Mac? Why does it disappear? I am running macOS 13.5 on a Mac Studio.

This morning

This afternoon

 

[Ben J.]

Still here on 13.4.1.
…and you didn't update to 13.5 today and that's what caused it?

 

[howdytom]

It could be. You might be right, thanks.

Any macOS 13.5 users?

 

[ItWasNotMe]

I'm on 13.5 and have it set on, so my Mac looks like your first screenshot

I've no idea what Apple is thinking - it seems to have disappeared from the documentation for desktops...

The Energy Saver section of the Manual - see this from

Change Energy Saver settings on a Mac desktop computer

Set options that control how your Mac uses energy.

support.apple.com

However it seems you can set it if you have a laptop !!!!

See - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchle41a6ccd/13.0/mac/13.0

 

[Ben J.]

I've heard of system settings like this one being available on certain models and not on others.

Let's not forget that, if I'm not mistaken, this setting only applies to old spinning HDs, and have no effect on SSDs.

 

[Escaladieu]

I have exactly the same problem. Hard disks sleeping was causing delays in Adobe Lightroom. 13.5 fixed this. However to verify that the problem was fixed I turned it off and now I can't turn it on again!

 

[howdytom]

Ben comment pointed me in the right direction. As I found out it is not related to the macOS 13.5 update. This Energy Saver setting will only show up when you physically connect a external SSD or spinning hard drive with your Mac. In my case I am using a Mac Studio. I used to run backups in the afternoon. That is why it wasn't visible in morning. 🤦‍♂️ Frankly, I am not big fan about this "dynamic" Ventura approach. I do prefer a global settings just like in all macOS releases before.

 

[Escaladieu]

Ben comment pointed me in the right direction. As I found out it is not related to the macOS 13.5 update. This Energy Saver setting will only show up when you physically connect a external SSD or spinning hard drive with your Mac. In my case I am using a Mac Studio. I used to run backups in the afternoon. That is why it wasn't visible in morning. 🤦‍♂️ Frankly, I am not big fan about this "dynamic" Ventura approach. I do prefer a global settings just like in all macOS releases before.

Sadly this is not the case with my system. I have 2 usb connected WD hard drives which are connected all the time, however the option is not available under energy saver. They are connected via an OWC TB hub, and used for backup via CCC.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

In terminal the manual for pmset says you can set/unset/display this using the argument disksleep, as shown by the command "man pmset"

"disksleep - disk spindown timer; replaces 'spindown' argument in 10.4 (value in minutes, or 0 to disable)"

You can use the following to show the current settings, "pmset -g live"

For me, with the option turned on in System Settings I see Disksleep is set to 10, i.e. spin down the disks after 10 minutes.

 

[Escaladieu]

In terminal the manual for pmset says you can set/unset/display this using the argument disksleep, as shown by the command "man pmset"

"disksleep - disk spindown timer; replaces 'spindown' argument in 10.4 (value in minutes, or 0 to disable)"

You can use the following to show the current settings, "pmset -g live"

For me, with the option turned on in System Settings I see Disksleep is set to 10, i.e. spin down the disks after 10 minutes.

Thank you I'll give it a go