Is your MBP not sleeping after inactivity?

[garyd9]

Noticed that my new MBP with 10.6.1 wasn't going to "sleep" after the time specified in System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Computer Sleep. Closing the lid or choosing 'sleep' from the apple menu worked fine. After playing with it a while, I _think_ I might have narrowed down the issue:

First, a couple of questions to see if the problem I'm seeing is only my own, or a common issue.

If you are having the problem, is your MBP unibody? with SD slot or expresscard slot?

Are you using the Apple factory HDD or an aftermarket one?

How I fixed the issue: I had the option selected on the same preference pane to "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible." If I unchecked this item, the machine would sleep after the specified time of inactivity (Actually, it would take about 30 seconds longer while the machine wrote the memory contents to the HDD.)

If you had the problem, does this fix it for you? If you did NOT have the problem, does checking this box create the problem for you?

Thanks
Gary

 

[Jocelyn84]

There are a bunch of people having the same problem a few threads down, including myself. My drive is aftermarket, nothing in my Expresscard slot, and my put to sleep when possible is unchecked. Needless to say, its still not sleeping even after 30 secs. I even created a new account, logged on it and I get the same result.

PS https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/776329/

 

[garyd9]

Okay, then maybe my problem is different from yours, though the most noticeable symptom is similar.

Here's another thing I found: My MBP isn't putting my HDD to sleep, regardless of the setting mentioned above. I also tried using pmset to force the 'disksleep' parameter to 1, and it still doesn't sleep. This is 10 minutes after a reboot with nothing whatsoever running. Tried it with a 'safe' boot as well... still no drive sleep...

My guess is that, in my case, when the checkbox for sleeping the drive is set, it's inability to sleep the drive is keeping the entire mbp from sleeping. When I uncheck that setting, however, it's not trying to "sleep" the HDD, and just powers it down. No idea if this makes sense with how the MBP sleeps or not, but... it's a wild guess.

Is there any 'terminal' command available that will forcibly tell the HDD to go to sleep/idle immediately? This might be useful in trying to determine if it's the MBP's power management stuff that's preventing HDD sleep or if its a HDD or interface issue.

Update/More info:

burned and booted a ubuntu liveCD. Using the nice hdparm linux utility, I can put the drive to sleep (spin down) successfully. I can also set the standby timeout of the drive directly (and it works fine.)

This leads me to believe that the problem is OSX, or perhaps just SL. Then again, it could be Apple deliberately not working properly with aftermarket drives...

 

[garyd9]

Update: I duplicated my aftermarket (seagate 500GB 7200.4) HDD to the factory 320 5400rpm drive - and put the factory drive back into the MBP. After all this, the drive still doesn't sleep under 10.6.1. In addition, the MBP will no longer go into system sleep due to inactivity regardless of the setting of the "hard drive sleep" checkbox. The machine DOES sleep if I close the lid or choose the option from the apple menu.

Next steps:

Install 10.5.7 to the machine and test again.

Test after updating to 10.5.8.

Try with a clean install of 10.6.0

Update 10.6.1 and see what happens.


Update:

inactivity sleep works fine (regardless of hdd sleep checkbox) for both 10.5.7 and 10.5.8. Installing 10.6.0 now...

 

[garyd9]

Odd. inactivity sleep worked fine with 10.6.0 (clean install) and 10.6.1 using the stock/factory 320/5400 hdd.

When I did my previous 10.6 install, it was a clean install, but I migrated my system preferences from a time machine backup. Perhaps that messed something up?

 

[garyd9]

Now I'm completely confused. I put my 500GB/7200rpm drive back in... and inactivity sleep works now.

Strange... really, really strange.