Any way to stop macOS waiting while external HD spins up from sleep?

[AVR2]

I have an external 2TB HD. It occasionally goes to sleep (thanks to its firmware, it ignores the Energy Saver settings), and whenever it's woken up, macOS waits until it's spun up and online, so you can't do anything for about 5 seconds. I'm currently on Catalina, but it's done it on every previous version of macOS since I bought the drive.

Is there any way to avoid this wait state, or do I just have to force it never to go to sleep?

It's particularly irritating when I have to wait for it to wake up after I select "Log Out".

 

[Nermal]

I don't have a solution but agree that it's aggravating. MacOS seems to insist on spinning up all drives "just in case", even when you're just trying to save something to the internal SSD.

I actually migrated to a NAS, mainly to get more space, but not having to wait for spin-up is a great side benefit.

 

[Fishrrman]

There's a free utility called "Semulov" that can be used to dismount/remount external drives. Find it here:

Downloads

kainjow.com

(seems to have last been updated in 2018, but may still work)

When you run it, it puts an icon into the menu bar that can be used to mount/dismount drives.
It might be worth a try to see if the Semulov-dismounted drive stays dismounted. No promises that this will indeed prevent the drive from "spinning up".
But again, it's worth trying.


The external 2tb drive in question -- is it a 3.5" drive in an enclosure that has it's own power supply?
If so, you could do this:
a. Plug the drive's power supply into a small power strip
b. When you dismount the drive and it disappears from the desktop, reach down and TURN OFF the power strip (the drive is now powered off and is "unseen" by the Mac).
c. When you need to access the drive again, reach down and TURN ON the power strip (this should cause the drive to re-mount on the desktop).


Or, you could "do it the neanderthal way" like I do (look at my avatar):
Just unplug the drive when you're not going to use it for a while...