Seagate Backup plus won't go to sleep

[Canezmd]

So I bought a 3tb usb 3 Seagate backup plus drive to use with time machine on my 27 inch 2012 imac. It works great, except that it never goes to sleep and stops spinning.

My mac is set to "turn off disk drives when not in use". It turns off the screen and the internal fusion drive, but the external seagate never stops spinning... even when the imac has been out for hours.

Anyone have this same drive?

 

[BSoares]

I bought a Seagate and saw the same behavior... they said they have a version just for Macs that doesn't suffer from that problem. The version I bought was Windows formatted and formatting it for Mac makes it work but it would never sleep...

 

[jedolley]

So I bought a 3tb usb 3 Seagate backup plus drive to use with time machine on my 27 inch 2012 imac. It works great, except that it never goes to sleep and stops spinning.

My mac is set to "turn off disk drives when not in use". It turns off the screen and the internal fusion drive, but the external seagate never stops spinning... even when the imac has been out for hours.

Anyone have this same drive?

I have the same drive and am not having that issue. However, I do have it partitioned (2TB for media files and 1TB for CCC) and I am not using Time Machine. That should not matter, but I figured I'd point out the differences anyways.

 

[Canezmd]

I even tried turning off time machine... It still was spinning for 24 hours. It won't stop spinning until I dismount it.

that's annoying.

 

[WilliamG]

Same issue here. 3TB Backup Plus connected to 27" 2012 iMac via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 = won't go to sleep.

*edit*

Seems like you have to have it formatted HFS for it to sleep. I had it formatted NTFS for Bootcamp gaming, but that prevented it from sleeping in OS X. I'm seeing if you can "fool" the disk into sleeping by making a smaller HFS partition as well as the NTFS partition so OS X will see the HFS and put the whole disk to sleep..

*edit*

Nope. It will only go to sleep in OS X if it's completely formatted HFS. Boo.

*edit*

Same thing happens with a 2TB USB 3.0 2.5" Western Digital My Passport drive. It will sleep only if the whole drive is formatted HFS. Poop!

*edit*

Seems the Paragon NTFS application is the cause. I'll have to figure out something else to use instead, I guess!

 

[bizon1]

I have a WD My Passport that is formatted HFS only and it will not sleep either. So it must be something else that prevents it from sleeping other than the format.

 

[Lancer]

I've got the same Seagate but the 2Tb version and it works fine with Time Machine. How is it connected to your iMac, directly in the back or with a USB Hub? Not that it should make a difference.

I did have an issue yesterday when I woke up my iMac Time Machine thought the Seagate was locked, I had to unmount then unplug and plug back in but it is working now as normal.

FYI when I first plugged it in TM asked if I wanted to use it, I said yes and TM went at formated it correctly for Mac OS X.

 

[macalec]

When I had my seagate, I had to wipe the drive and reformat in order for it to work correctly. Maybe you need to do that as well? Also I had to in order for mine to sync with Time Machine.