M1 Mac mini external usb c drive sleep

[Kim Bach]

I have a M1 Mac mini, and my Thunderbolt drive keeps goin to sleep.
Even though I have turned this feature off in settings,
I have even tried the Terminal command
and Still the drive sleeps every 60 seconds, and therefore has to wake up with wheel of dead every time for 20 seconds.
This is really putting me back to when I had Windows Vista and changed to Mac. I am regretting I bought this M1 Mac mini big time.

Apple supports solution is to always run the Mac In Safe mode,, but really ,?

Any body have a solution ?

Mac Mini M1, 2020 16GB
Drive G-Raid 20 TB Connection USB C

 

[gogogo2]

Try a ssd USB , ssd not need to stop spin,

 

[Slartibart]

Open a terminal. Type:

sudo pmset -c spindown 0

Enter your password when ask.

 

[Kim Bach]

Open a terminal. Type:

sudo pmset -c spindown 0

Enter your password when ask.

Thanks , I have already tried this, but it still goes to sleep. and even before I wrote this message through.

 

[Kim Bach]

See this attached video in real time.
Its unbearable to work with.

 

[Slartibart]

Thanks , I have already tried this, but it still goes to sleep. and even before I wrote this message through.

So what gives you

pmset -g | grep disksleep

in the terminal?

EDIT: what partitions are on the HD?
EDIT II: by any chance this is a Western Digital drive?
EDIT III:
#!/bin/bash # Used to not let a volume named NAP-ATTACKED sleep volpresent=$(mount | grep NAP-ATTACKED | wc -c) if [ $volpresent -gt 0 ] then touch /Volumes/MYBOOK/.hiddenfile fi

This script should be made executable by running the following on the Terminal: chmod +x ./no_sleep_script.sh. The best way to run this script every five minutes - or what the time out for disksleep above is) is to use the launchd system built into Mac OS X (or via e.g. Lingon - a great tool to manage it.)

 

[Kim Bach]

pmset -g | grep disksleep

 

[Kim Bach]

Its Mac OS Journaled
Raid 0

 

[Kim Bach]

EDIT II: by any chance this is a Western Digital drive?

Yes they are 10 TB Western Digital drives

 

[Kim Bach]

EDIT III:

Way to complicated for my level.

 

[Slartibart]

Yes they are 10 TB Western Digital drives

Western Digital drives to my knowledge come with a firmware defined time out. The way around IMHO (and caused by my restricted knowledge of MacOS-Fu) is a script which “touches” the drive every n minutes.

Otherwise: Maybe WD supplies some option in their MacOS software to change this?

 

[davepete]

Had the same problem, but I fixed it by adjusting my settings in Amphetamine -- a useful app for controlling display and hard drive sleep. It's in the App Store, I don't know the developers, but it's similar to another app called Caffeine. In Amphetamine's preferences, you can prevent external hard drives from going to sleep by enabling Drive Alive. It reads or writes a tiny bit of data every X number of seconds to the external drives. I have mine set to 600 seconds, and the external drive now never goes to sleep.

 

[Kim Bach]

Western Digital drives to my knowledge come with a firmware defined time out. The way around IMHO (and caused by my restricted knowledge of MacOS-Fu) is a script which “touches” the drive every n minutes.

Otherwise: Maybe WD supplies some option in their MacOS software to change this?

Thanks for your input ,
I am trying G-Raid forums and WD
Have a nice weekend

 

[Kim Bach]

Had the same problem, but I fixed it by adjusting my settings in Amphetamine -- a useful app for controlling display and hard drive sleep. It's in the App Store, I don't know the developers, but it's similar to another app called Caffeine. In Amphetamine's preferences, you can prevent external hard drives from going to sleep by enabling Drive Alive. It reads or writes a tiny bit of data every X number of seconds to the external drives. I have mine set to 600 seconds, and the external drive now never goes to sleep.

Thanks davepete , It works you are a life saver. Thank you very much, have a nice weekend.

 

[teo3vs]

I have the same issue. It's the most annoying issue I had with the M1 Mac Mini after the lack of RGB output to the monitor (only YPbPr). I edit videos so I need many TBs, SSDs are not big enough.

Amphetamine seems to be a life saver, however I would like the hard drive to sleep when I'm not using it, just I don't want it to sleep all the time. Maybe after 10 minutes not using it.

There's the command: sudo pmset -c spindown <time>

But it simply doesn't work.

 

[Kim Bach]

Amphetamine works , and when you want it to sleep again you just end session and it goes back to sleep

 

[haralds]

Could also be something in the drive firmware.

 

[TonkotsuBlack]

Had the same problem, but I fixed it by adjusting my settings in Amphetamine -- a useful app for controlling display and hard drive sleep. It's in the App Store, I don't know the developers, but it's similar to another app called Caffeine. In Amphetamine's preferences, you can prevent external hard drives from going to sleep by enabling Drive Alive. It reads or writes a tiny bit of data every X number of seconds to the external drives. I have mine set to 600 seconds, and the external drive now never goes to sleep.

Yup this solved this exact issue for me too. Thank for the heads up!

 

[ekfffc]

Same thing happens with my 4x6TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives in my OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID. I had the issue on both my 2019 MBP 16" and M1 Max. If I stop working, 25-30 sec spinup time. Has nothing to do with my Mac. I will be trying Amphetamine too.

The drive are designed to be "energy efficient", but in reality, designed to be annoying.