External drives will not stay asleep

[badlydrawnboy]

I have a LaCie Big and two LaCie D2s connected to my iMac via Thunderbolt.

When I put my iMac to sleep, the external drives also sleep—at least at first. But shortly thereafter they start cycling on and off, literally every 60 seconds or so.

This of course wakes up my iMac and prevents it from sleeping. I've called Apple and they are useless.

I checked the system log and see a lot of stuff repeated, but I don't understand it.

discoveryd[52]: Basic Sockets Couldn't set IP_BOUND_IF on socket fd[81] scopeID[4] errno[22] result[-1]

and:

networkd[144]: +[NETLedBelly stopFastFail] Clearing ledbelly failure cache

and:

configd[26]: network changed: v4(en0:10.0.1.11, en1) v6(en1!:2601:9:4780:757:8a63:dfff:fec6:68f9) DNS Proxy SMB

and:

kernel[0]: IOThunderboltSwitch<0xffffff805bd57e00>(0x1)::listenerCallback - Thunderbolt HPD packet for route = 0x1 port = 11 unplug = 0

 

[WilliamG]

Are you running any software like iStat Menus?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Are you running any software like iStat Menus?

I don't even know what that is, so no.

I just heard on another forum that external LaCie thunderbolt drives don't play nice with OS X/Macs due to possibly a firmware issue or possibly an OS X issue (LaCie says one thing, Apple says another). All of my external drives are LaCie, so maybe that's the problem.

 

[imanidiot]

I am having the same issue with one (only) of two WD external drives. And it surfaced out of the blue, about two weeks ago. I have been back and forth with Apple Support about it to no avail. I've tried everything and no dice. It is currently a ticket which has been submitted to Apple Engineering (last weekend) by an AppleCare Senior Advisor who's been trying to help me, and am waiting to hear back from them. It's maddening. I have heard the theory that it is a problem with the pmset settings, but I'm afraid to try messing with them in Terminal, but if keeps up I may do it anyway. For now I'm just waiting to hear back from Apple.

 

[JamesMay82]

I have the opposite but is on a Lacie 2 big thunderbolt drive.

when the iMac goes to sleep it ejects hard drive which then gives me improperly ejected message..

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I am having the same issue with one (only) of two WD external drives. And it surfaced out of the blue, about two weeks ago. I have been back and forth with Apple Support about it to no avail. I've tried everything and no dice. It is currently a ticket which has been submitted to Apple Engineering (last weekend) by an AppleCare Senior Advisor who's been trying to help me, and am waiting to hear back from them. It's maddening. I have heard the theory that it is a problem with the pmset settings, but I'm afraid to try messing with them in Terminal, but if keeps up I may do it anyway. For now I'm just waiting to hear back from Apple.

If you could keep me posted on what you learn I'd appreciate it.

 

[imanidiot]

I either have to keep my Mac from sleeping (if I leave a radio station playing in iTunes it won't happen because the computer is not sleeping), but otherwise I have to unmount the affected drive, then unplug the USB cable, because if I don't, despite the fact that I have unmounted/ejected the drive, after a short time it will remount and eject itself time after time, literally all night long, and in the morning I will find a vertical column of Disk not properly ejected error messages down the length of my desktop. As I said, maddening.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I have the opposite but is on a Lacie 2 big thunderbolt drive.

when the iMac goes to sleep it ejects hard drive which then gives me improperly ejected message..

I have this too and have been following the Apple Discussions thread on it. I've lately been using Jettison to eject the drives automatically when the iMac sleeps and then re-mount them when it wakes up. It works pretty well, but hasn't stopped the drives from spinning up and down when the iMac is sleeping.

 

[WilliamG]

I don't even know what that is, so no.

I just heard on another forum that external LaCie thunderbolt drives don't play nice with OS X/Macs due to possibly a firmware issue or possibly an OS X issue (LaCie says one thing, Apple says another). All of my external drives are LaCie, so maybe that's the problem.

Can you test any other brand of disk to see if that's the issue?

 

[imanidiot]

Can you test any other brand of disk to see if that's the issue?

I have the same issue with Western Digital drives.

 

[JamesMay82]

I have this too and have been following the Apple Discussions thread on it. I've lately been using Jettison to eject the drives automatically when the iMac sleeps and then re-mount them when it wakes up. It works pretty well, but hasn't stopped the drives from spinning up and down when the iMac is sleeping.

I've actually wondered if its a problem with thunderbolt cable, I might ring the manufacture and see if can get another one.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I've actually wondered if its a problem with thunderbolt cable, I might ring the manufacture and see if can get another one.

I've tried 3 different cables, so it's not the issue in my case.

 

[robgendreau]

I had issues with my OWC Thunderbolt enclosure.

I now just do it all manually; I don't trust the energy settings or anything else.

Check Caffeine for keeping your Mac awake. And either Jettison or Mountain to eject and sleep the Mac. A nice thing about Mountain is that you can eject and then remount without a trip to Disk Utility.

Rob

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I had issues with my OWC Thunderbolt enclosure.

I now just do it all manually; I don't trust the energy settings or anything else.

Check Caffeine for keeping your Mac awake. And either Jettison or Mountain to eject and sleep the Mac. A nice thing about Mountain is that you can eject and then remount without a trip to Disk Utility.

Rob

I'm using Jettison, which can remount as well as eject. Is Mountain different in some way?

I hadn't heard of Caffeine. Thanks.

 

[imanidiot]

My Response from Apple

Yesterday I received Apple engineering's analysis of my problem:

Ticket Response:

"I understand the customer is reporting an issue of a drive disconnecting in sleep. The customer included the following in Capture Data;

Date: 01/17/2015
Time: 07:00:00
Description: I have two external hard drives connected to my iMac. When waking my iMac from sleep, I get a series of "Disk Improperly Ejected" error messages down the right hand side of the display FOR ONE OF THE TWO DRIVES ONLY, a drive which I have been using for a year without incident. This started about a week ago, literally out of the blue, had made no changes to my system set-up. Originally this would happen whenever the Mac slept, and in fact if I manually ejected the drive in question but left it connected via USB 3, it would remount and eject itself time after time. After trying everything I could think of, I verified and reapired permissions in Disk Utility, which seemed to fix things. However I have discovered my problem is apparently fixed if I let the Mac sleep on it's own (I have "Put hard discs to sleep when possible" checked in System Preferences), at least this morning I woke it and got no error message, but if I manually put it to sleep (clicking the apple, then clicking Sleep), when I return and tap the spacebar to wake the Mac, I have the Disk Not Properly Ejected error message again.
—————————————

It appears the customer has a My Book 1234, and a My Book 1230. In that description, when the customer uses the “Sleep” function from the menu, he is forcing the system to kill all processes and sleep. Killing these processes for sleep is what is causing the issue.

Either, supporting software for the drive is not responding to Energy Saver requests correctly OR, in the absence of supporting software, the drive itself is not responding to the energy saver requests.

In that case, the customer should either remove the supporting software and test OR if there is no supporting software, then determine if there is any updated firmware for the drive that may allow the drive to respond as well as the other drive.

In the meantime, setting the computer to Never sleep is what can be done. “

For what it's worth...

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Thanks for posting that. Not worth much, IMO.

On the Apple Discussions forum about this issue, most people have given up after months of trying different solutions. The suggestion for people with LaCie drives, at least, is:

• Manually eject drives before sleeping the computer. Or, install Mountain or Jettison, apps that will automatically eject drives upon sleep and mount them when the computer wakes. (I've done the latter, and most of the time it works well.)
• After sleeping the computer, hold the blue button for one second on the LaCie external drive(s) to put them to sleep.

Other recommendations have been to use the Caffeine app to prevent the computer from sleeping until you put it to sleep manually. So the computer and external drives would stay on all day, and then you would just manually sleep everything at the end of the day.

This isn't a great solution for me, because I have an automated back-up routine that runs at 12am. But I may change that to run at 530am, just before I start my work day.

 

[DiegogDiegog]

Hi,
About these two options for Mounter Apps, which one would you prefer? Mountain or Jettison?
Thank you for your help.

 

[DiegogDiegog]

Hello,
I am personally dealing with this issue since I signed up for Backblaze which even tho the awaked drive is not selected for backup, the App keeps "indexing it" as if is constantly reading or cataloging the drive.
This issue still has not being resolved by their tech suport department.

Here is a great article that teaches you how to know exactly which and what proscess is accessing the external drive when the computer is sleeping.
https://www.jackenhack.com/disk-that-refuses-to-sleep-in-mac-os-x-how-to-fix-it/

Please let me know if there is a solution for this besides getting an external SSD.
Thank you,

 

[DiegogDiegog]

THIS SOLVED FOR ME.

Power Strip causing it!
"I have been plagued with this issue for TWO YEARS and lost a valuable external drive because of the constant spinning. It was my Monster ecogreen power strip that was power cycling it. It detects when the computer stops drawing a certain amount of power and then shuts down the peripherals attached which included my drive. I think the minimum current draw was just borderline to cause it to cycle on and off. Since its been gone, NO MORE ISSUES."

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-drive-wont-stop-spinning.1804154/#post-25171244
[doublepost=1507122439][/doublepost]THIS SOLVED FOR ME.

Power Strip causing it!
"I have been plagued with this issue for TWO YEARS and lost a valuable external drive because of the constant spinning. It was my Monster ecogreen power strip that was power cycling it. It detects when the computer stops drawing a certain amount of power and then shuts down the peripherals attached which included my drive. I think the minimum current draw was just borderline to cause it to cycle on and off. Since its been gone, NO MORE ISSUES."

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-drive-wont-stop-spinning.1804154/#post-25171244