External Harddrive with Mac mini problem

[bobhammer]

I have this problem that I hope you guys could help me with:

I have a late 2012 Mac mini, and I hava a few external harddrive connected to it (All Lacie - so I guess it should be compatible with mac), every now and then, when I wake the mac from sleep, some of the external drives would fail to be waken up, and tho the drive still appears on the desktop, it would not be loaded, and trying to eject will usually fail, and the mac would even fail to restart without a hard shutdown. Does anyone experience the same thing, and can share some thoughts on this.

Much appreciated and thanks everyone in advance.

 

[Fishrrman]

You didn't say how the drive was connected (USB, Firewire ?).

Drives not waking up with the Mini after a period of sleep seems to be a common problem, particularly with USB.

It could be a problem with the drive enclosure.
There seems to have been some problems with the Mac OS itself, insofar as handling "wake from sleep" is concerned.

My suggestion:
During the day, don't put the Mini to sleep. (Set sleep to "never" in the energy saver pref pane)
Instead, just let the _display_ sleep, or manually shut it off if you're not going to be using it for a while.

The Mini is small enough, and energy-efficient enough, so that it will use very little power "at idle" if left on (instead of being put to sleep).

At night, just power it down, and power back up in the morning.