External drives continually sleeping and spinning up in M2 Pro Mac mini

[davebot 0.9]

I have a mystery that is driving me nuts, and Apple Support wasn't much help.

I have two HDDs in an external drive enclosure that continually sleep and then spin up -- over and over, every 1 - 3 minutes. They may also disconnect themselves while I'm away, but that is a fairly rare event. The last time this happened, I received "disk not ejected properly" notifications for both drives. That leads me to suspect the problem is not in one of the drives, but in macOS or in the external drive enclosure itself. As I type, the drives remain connected, and I see them in the sidebar in my Finder window.

I want to know if there are any problems with the enclosure, since I want to use that enclosure for two new HDDs I bought for use by Time Machine.

I'm watching this happen even now, as I type! So I know the computer is not sleeping. The drives appear to sleep and then spin up, over and over -- about every 1 - 3 minutes. The two drives will enter a mode where the activity lights remain green but they slowly pulse, as if in a sleep mode. And they pulse in unison. The blue power light on the enclosure is unaffected -- always on, never blinking. After a minute or two, I hear the spin-up noise for the drives, and the activity lights blink. Then the cycle repeats.

Yesterday, while performing an SMC reset, the drives showed the same pulsing "sleep" type response with the Mac powered off.

The computer is a 2-month old M2 Pro Mac mini with 16 GB / 1 TB. The enclosure is a 2018 OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB3.1 enclosure that supports 2 SATA HDDs (OWCMED3ER0GB). The disks are the HDDs from my old Mac Pro tower. I'm using the original USB 3.1 cable that shipped with the enclosure, and it's plugged into one of the USB-A ports on the Mac mini. The OS is Ventura 13.5.

I have set everything I could to prevent sleeping of system and hard drives, multiple times, including after the SMC reset. In particular, I disabled the option to sleep hard drives when possible.

Any ideas?

 

[Bigwaff]

Couple comments before suggestions -
First, Apple drives have custom firmware. It’s possible the Apple firmware and the enclosure USB chipset are simply not compatible. Are these OEM Apple drives?

The spin up / spin down seems like a power issue. Possible the AC adapter power supply is failing.

You could also try a different USB cable with USB-C?

You could also try a USB-C to eSATA adapter cable.

Hope you find an answer. Good luck!

 

[herbert7265]

Not sure if this helps, but it may be worth a try.

I am using the same drive enclosure from OWC as you do, but with drives from OWC, configured as RAID 0.

After switching to a MBP 16" M2 Max, and connecting the drive via a CalDigit TS4 to the computer, I recognized that the drive disconnected on its own randomly after some time, even when in use. Connecting the drive directly to my MBP via one of the TB ports resolved that problem, at least I have not recognized again the problem in the last days and weeks.

So, maybe you want to connect your drive to another USB port on your Mac Mini and look if the same behavior still shows or not.

Another observation I made: My drive was often "busy", you could as well see and hear it, even I was not using the drive. So finally I made a test: I prevented Spotlight from searching this drive and it that solved this problem, means the drive is now idle when not using it. For my usage that´s not a problem, as the drive only contains images that are handled via LrC. Others may need the Spotlight functionality and this may not be a solution.

In case you want to try this, go to "System Setting" - "Siri & Spotlight" - "Spotlight Privacy" (at the bottom) and there add the drive to the Pop-Up Window that states "Privacy".

Herbert

 

[Algr]

Spotlight

It's amazing how much harder it is to find stuff on your own hard drive then it used to be in OS 9. Even if you know the exact file name, half your hard drive shows up for any search, with exact matches appearing for an instant and then vanishing! I wonder if spotlight can be shut down entirely and replaced.

 

[davebot 0.9]

Thanks. Here's what I know:

One of the drives is the original 320 GB disk from my 2008 Mac Pro 3,1. It was listed on the original Apple invoice as

Hard Drive Bay1 065-7189 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb

The other drive is a 1 TB Seagate drive I bought through Amazon:

Seagate Desktop 1 TB Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6 GB with NCQ 64 MB Cache 3.5 Inch (ST1000DX001)

I know both drives were bootable system drives at one point.

I don't know how I could test the AC adapter. I do note that the power indicator never blinks or dims. The fan noise is constant. If I start accessing the drive, it stops trying to sleep. So I didn't immediately think of a power problem. The converter is marked for 12 V 4000 mA output, from input of 100 - 240 V. I don't think I have anything I can swap in its place for a test, though.

I don't have a mini-USB to USB-C cable to test. I think I found an eSATA to USB-C cable on Amazon for $20. But who knows if that will make a difference. At that point, it might be smart for me to just up and buy a new version of the enclosure.

I did have another mini-USB to USB-A cable. I just unmounted, powered off, swapped cables, and restarted the drives. Result: no change. It's doing the same sleep / spin-up cycle.

Here's a link to the OWC page for the enclosure:

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual for Mac USB 3.1 Gen 1

The best dual-drive hardware RAID solution for creative workflows, project archives, and system backups where reliability and versatile performance count.

eshop.macsales.com

On the back of the enclosure, I see that I have the RAID switch set to "IND", for independent drive mode.

Thanks!

 

[herbert7265]

The blue light of the drive is continuously on, that´s normal.

The green light(s) are continuously on when the HDDs are idle and will blink when the HDDs are accessed (you then also may hear the HDDs working).

I dare to state forget (at least at this moment) the AC Adapter. I cannot imagine that´s the root cause. You either have power or not. HDDs waking up is normally connected to the fact that they get accessed or not.

Again, why don´t you just make the test and prevent the Spotlight search on your HDDs. That´s done in a minute and you will see if that has an impact or not.

Another (potential) test: Open your drive enclosure and disconnect / take out one (and afterwards the other) of the HDDs. You are using completely different HDDs, maybe the combination of the drive enclosure controller and your Mac Mini struggles with that.

Last but not least, this is a cable I can recommend, I use the same for my drive:

JSAUX USB 3.0 Cable B Male to USB-C, 6.6ft USB 3 Type B Cord Nylon Briaded Compatible with Docking Station, External Hard Drivers, Scanner and More

c to b 3.0 cable

www.amazon.com

Herbert

 

[davebot 0.9]

In case you want to try this, go to "System Setting" - "Siri & Spotlight" - "Spotlight Privacy" (at the bottom) and there add the drive to the Pop-Up Window that states "Privacy".

Herbert

Thanks Herbert. Since I didn't do any configuring, but just threw my drives from the old computer into the external case, I thought the "IND" setting was probably the right one.

I have one other USB-A port on the mini. I have a 10-port hub connected to the other port. I have an unused USB-C port, but no USB-B to USB-C cable. I'm not super motivated to start buying different cables on Amazon, and then swap them in and see what happens.

I did try removing both drives from Spotlight searches. But they weren't showing any "busy" activity to begin with. The activity lights showed some minor activity, and then both drives went into sleep mode. Half a minute ago, they spun up. Now they are sleeping again. So, I don't think that's it.

Your CalDigit looks nice! It's 4 times the cost of this enclosure, though.

 

[name99]

I have a mystery that is driving me nuts, and Apple Support wasn't much help.

I have two HDDs in an external drive enclosure that continually sleep and then spin up -- over and over, every 1 - 3 minutes. They may also disconnect themselves while I'm away, but that is a fairly rare event. The last time this happened, I received "disk not ejected properly" notifications for both drives. That leads me to suspect the problem is not in one of the drives, but in macOS or in the external drive enclosure itself. As I type, the drives remain connected, and I see them in the sidebar in my Finder window.

I want to know if there are any problems with the enclosure, since I want to use that enclosure for two new HDDs I bought for use by Time Machine.

I'm watching this happen even now, as I type! So I know the computer is not sleeping. The drives appear to sleep and then spin up, over and over -- about every 1 - 3 minutes. The two drives will enter a mode where the activity lights remain green but they slowly pulse, as if in a sleep mode. And they pulse in unison. The blue power light on the enclosure is unaffected -- always on, never blinking. After a minute or two, I hear the spin-up noise for the drives, and the activity lights blink. Then the cycle repeats.

Yesterday, while performing an SMC reset, the drives showed the same pulsing "sleep" type response with the Mac powered off.

The computer is a 2-month old M2 Pro Mac mini with 16 GB / 1 TB. The enclosure is a 2018 OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB3.1 enclosure that supports 2 SATA HDDs (OWCMED3ER0GB). The disks are the HDDs from my old Mac Pro tower. I'm using the original USB 3.1 cable that shipped with the enclosure, and it's plugged into one of the USB-A ports on the Mac mini. The OS is Ventura 13.5.

I have set everything I could to prevent sleeping of system and hard drives, multiple times, including after the SMC reset. In particular, I disabled the option to sleep hard drives when possible.

Any ideas?

Unfortunately this is a known problem with Apple Silicon. My *guess* is that we have some combination of either vendors not following the USB spec 100%, or the spec being somewhat ambiguous and Apple guessing the wrong interpretation relative to some chipset vendors.
(The same seems to be true with external monitors.)

The good news is that it gets better with every OS release. When I got my M2 mini about 4 months ago, I had 3 hard drives that kept disconnecting after a few minutes of no activity. As of the most recent OS update I no longer have this problem.

Apple seem to be taking this REALLY seriously. Meaning that, I suspect if you submit a big report (feedback.apple.com) given the precise details of your system and drives they'll probably ship a fix in an OS update in two or three months.

 

[name99]

Thanks Herbert. Since I didn't do any configuring, but just threw my drives from the old computer into the external case, I thought the "IND" setting was probably the right one.

I have one other USB-A port on the mini. I have a 10-port hub connected to the other port. I have an unused USB-C port, but no USB-B to USB-C cable. I'm not super motivated to start buying different cables on Amazon, and then swap them in and see what happens.

I did try removing both drives from Spotlight searches. But they weren't showing any "busy" activity to begin with. The activity lights showed some minor activity, and then both drives went into sleep mode. Half a minute ago, they spun up. Now they are sleeping again. So, I don't think that's it.

Your CalDigit looks nice! It's 4 times the cost of this enclosure, though.

Another option, if you believe the issue might be with your enclosure is just to try using one of them in a different enclosure. Perhaps a friend (or you) just have one lying around, or you can probably find one on Craigslist for a buck or two.

 

[Juicy Box]

I cannot recall the exact scenario, but I remember seeing multiple threads with similar complaints.

It was always AS Macs, and external HDDs.

Probably is a MacOS and AS issue.

 

[herbert7265]

Since I didn't do any configuring, but just threw my drives from the old computer into the external case, I thought the "IND" setting was probably the right one.

That´s the correct setting for the enclosure in case you use the installed HDDs independently, means not configured as RAID.

I have one other USB-A port on the mini. I have a 10-port hub connected to the other port. I have an unused USB-C port, but no USB-B to USB-C cable. I'm not super motivated to start buying different cables on Amazon, and then swap them in and see what happens.

I understand that, but it could be worth a try if everything else doesn´t help. Also, the cable I linked in my last post is reasonable priced and works in my case.

I did try removing both drives from Spotlight searches. But they weren't showing any "busy" activity to begin with. The activity lights showed some minor activity, and then both drives went into sleep mode. Half a minute ago, they spun up. Now they are sleeping again. So, I don't think that's it.

So did you add your two drives (as you are using them independently) to the Spotlight exclusion window? Did you then wait for some time, disconnect you drives, power it down, then power it up again and connect it? And then there was the same symptom?

If so, then I would really make the test and run the enclosure only with one of the HDDs to see if that has an effect. Also a quick test, not a lot of efforts.

Your CalDigit looks nice! It's 4 times the cost of this enclosure, though.

Yep, looks nice, means quite some serious money and works great. Maybe I wouldn´t really need it, but my wife... quite some drives to be connected to our computer, based on the amount of data she produces (event photography).

Herbert

 

[MacProFCP]

I have a mystery that is driving me nuts, and Apple Support wasn't much help.

I have two HDDs in an external drive enclosure that continually sleep and then spin up -- over and over, every 1 - 3 minutes. They may also disconnect themselves while I'm away, but that is a fairly rare event. The last time this happened, I received "disk not ejected properly" notifications for both drives. That leads me to suspect the problem is not in one of the drives, but in macOS or in the external drive enclosure itself. As I type, the drives remain connected, and I see them in the sidebar in my Finder window.

I want to know if there are any problems with the enclosure, since I want to use that enclosure for two new HDDs I bought for use by Time Machine.

I'm watching this happen even now, as I type! So I know the computer is not sleeping. The drives appear to sleep and then spin up, over and over -- about every 1 - 3 minutes. The two drives will enter a mode where the activity lights remain green but they slowly pulse, as if in a sleep mode. And they pulse in unison. The blue power light on the enclosure is unaffected -- always on, never blinking. After a minute or two, I hear the spin-up noise for the drives, and the activity lights blink. Then the cycle repeats.

Yesterday, while performing an SMC reset, the drives showed the same pulsing "sleep" type response with the Mac powered off.

The computer is a 2-month old M2 Pro Mac mini with 16 GB / 1 TB. The enclosure is a 2018 OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB3.1 enclosure that supports 2 SATA HDDs (OWCMED3ER0GB). The disks are the HDDs from my old Mac Pro tower. I'm using the original USB 3.1 cable that shipped with the enclosure, and it's plugged into one of the USB-A ports on the Mac mini. The OS is Ventura 13.5.

I have set everything I could to prevent sleeping of system and hard drives, multiple times, including after the SMC reset. In particular, I disabled the option to sleep hard drives when possible.

Any ideas?

This was a known bug with Apple. They supposedly fixed it back in Big Sur but some drives will still have this issue. Thankfully my OWC drives don’t do this.

Apple recommended turning off “allow disc to sleep” and just keep them idle but awake. When I had this, I ejected the drives whenever I wanted them down.

You can also try turning off Power Nap.

You can also try rebuilding the raid (if you have them setup like that).

External drives spinning up during sleep - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

External hard drive spinning up during sleep

Every time I close the lid on my macbook air, my external hard drive seems to spin up for about 5 seconds every 30 seconds, and this will go on continuously, even for several hours. The noise itsel...

apple.stackexchange.com

 

[davebot 0.9]

I appreciate all the ideas! Thank you.

MacProFCP, are you referring to the bug that was fixed in Ventura for Mac Pros? I have a new Mac mini. I do have the disk sleep feature disabled, and the Power Nap feature is not available on the Mac mini. I'm not using RAID.

Herbert, thanks for the cable reference. Somehow, I can believe that using the USB-C port is worth trying. I'll order the cable.

I did remove both drives from Spotlight search, unmounted, unpowered, then repowered... it didn't make a difference.

Am I the only one whose drives seem to go into some kind of sleep mode, where the activity lights slowly pulse? But then something wakes them... and the cycle repeats. I don't understand why they would sleep in the first place. Is that in the disk firmware? Is it in the OWC controller?

So Herbert, if you are having good luck with this enclosure and your nice cable, that gives me some hope. I wondered if something in the OWC enclosure was going wonky and whether I should just buy a new one. My plan is to copy files from the two drives, and then replace them with two HDDs I just bought for Time Machine.

By the way, I have two other external drives, each in their own enclosure. Similar or older vintage. They connect to the USB hub that's connected to my mini's other USA-A port. No issues to report with them.

 

[QuickSilverLining]

I'll share that I've had a similar experience as OP on my M1 MBP 16" running Monterey. My hard drives constantly spin up and down every 3 minutes, unless I'm not accessing any files from them for an extended period of time, in which case they stay in "sleep" mode until I access a file. But even if I am actively working in a file, sometimes they will spin down while I'm looking at the file, and spin back up only if I manipulate it. I've disabled "put hard drives to sleep when possible" in the System Prefs, but that doesn't change anything.

I think this is an OS or AS issue for sure. I've had my two external hard drives (Western Digital) for about 5 years now, and when I used them with my previous laptop (mid 2012 MBP) on Mojave, I never had this issue. I switched back to that computer just to see how they would behave, and they were normal to me – they would spin down after about 10 minutes of me not using any files from them. Heck, I even tried them on a 2006 Mac Pro running Lion to make sure I wasn't going crazy, and they were fine on that as well. It wasn't until getting my new machine that this spinning up and down happens, and it drives me crazy.

 

[davebot 0.9]

QuickSilver, thank you for sharing! I'm starting to wonder if maybe I can live with this. As long as the drives aren't disconnecting, I can stand a little noise. When I was working on the 'disconnecting improperly' problem -- which is very infrequent, so hard to debug -- I seized on this spin-up thing as a possibly related problem.

About the Mac sleeping -- since I had turned off all the appropriate settings, I was convinced that the computer was not sleeping. But output from 'pmset -g log' showed otherwise. Gah. This is nuts. So now I open a Terminal window and type 'caffeinate' to keep the system awake. Okay. I can live with that.

But the drives sleeping -- maybe that's normal, then?

And maybe it's the continued ping (from... where?) that wakes the drive -- maybe that's really my only issue.

The wake period seems shorter, after removing the external drives from Spotlight search.

 

[davebot 0.9]

Hold on. I just noticed:

I can cause the external disks to spin up by loading a new URL in Safari! Whaaaaaat?

This does not seem to happen with Chrome or Firefox. Safari is my default browser. But launching Chrome or Firefox does cause the external disks to spin up.

Okay. I just tried loading another app: MacVim. Yes, the disks spin up!

I just tried a really old app, ToyViewer. Yup, the disks spin up -- and then go back to sleep.

Finder and System Settings do NOT seem to spin up the disks.

TextEdit -- yup, the disks spin up.

It's getting easier to test, because the 'wake' time is much shorter now. (Probably Herbert's idea of hiding the disks from Spotlight).

Could this have anything to do with the external disks being recognized as bootable MacOS disks??

 

[herbert7265]

Could this have anything to do with the external disks being recognized as bootable MacOS disks??

Question: What do you have stored on these disks? Do you use them for Time Machine backups?

Herbert

 

[davebot 0.9]

As I mentioned, these are former system disks from my old computer, with all my user files. My goal is to copy the files from these disks and then retire them. I already have two new HDDs to stick in the enclosure. I figured I could save some $$ by just buying the drives and re-use the old enclosure. I just want to make sure that the old enclosure still works with this new computer.

 

[herbert7265]

As I mentioned, these are former system disks from my old computer, with all my user files. My goal is to copy the files from these disks and then retire them. I already have two new HDDs to stick in the enclosure. I figured I could save some $$ by just buying the drives and re-use the old enclosure.

First of all, based on what you describe, I think there is nothing wrong with your drive enclosure, that should also work with your new drives. As mentioned, I have the same drive enclosure, also a few more single OWC drive enclosures, and they work without any problems for me since years.

So for what I understand, the old drives are former system drives that still have the former OS, programs and your data on them?

As you already have the new drives, why don’t you make a simple test? Take out the actual drives from the enclosure, put in the new drives, configure them as you plan to do (individual, RAID), format them (APFS, Guid Partition Map) and then you will see if the new drives behave the same way.

In case you configure the new drives also as individual drives you can then simply take out one of them again, put in one of your old drives and copy the data to the new drive, then do the same with the second old drive. That gets a little more complicated in case you want to configure the new drives as RAID 0 or 1, then you may first need to copy the data from the old drives either to your internal disk or another external disk (in case you have the data not already on a backup disk).

Herbert

 

[davebot 0.9]

Herbert, yeah, something like that! Except that I want the new drives to be for Time Machine. So I'll copy the old ones to other places. I guess (once my new cable arrives) my next step is to just replace the drives and see -- do the experiment. Thanks for all your help.

 

[herbert7265]

Herbert, yeah, something like that! Except that I want the new drives to be for Time Machine. So I'll copy the old ones to other places. I guess (once my new cable arrives) my next step is to just replace the drives and see -- do the experiment.

With a smile in my face… I just would put in the new drives to see if the problem persists or not. But that’s just me, curious as I am in such topics.

And you still can use the new drives after that for Time Machine… just erase them again after the tests!

Hmm, with another smile in my face… you need to copy the old drives to another place?! You do not have a backup of them?

Herbert

 

[davebot 0.9]

Yeah. My next step should be to copy the drives. I have another, brand new enclosure, to house a set of SSDs that I used briefly with the old Mac Pro. Once the drives are copied, I will just do the experiment! See how the new drives work.

I got into this because I was trying to figure out why the drives disconnected on their own. That happens so rarely that it's hard to debug. But I saw these other behaviors that I couldn't explain, so I thought I might make headway by addressing those. Can of worms, it is!

I did not expect that launching apps would ping my drives! Does that make sense to you? I.E., launch Firefox, and the drives spin up?

 

[herbert7265]

Sorry to bother you with some more question(s):

Again, for what I understand, the old drives in your enclosure have been the system disks from your old computer? You didn’t erase them or anything, you just put them in the drive enclosure with all “old” data still on the drives, means the former operating system, the installed programs and apps, and all your other data?

When switching to your new computer, did you do a system / data migration from your old computer or a clean setup of your new computer?

The reason why I ask: With a clean install of your new computer I can really not imagine why launching Firefox would spin up the old drives. But in case you migrated from your old to your new computer I could imagine that there is some connection to the old drives, even I cannot explain what and why (I am just an enthusiastic computer user, not a programmer or computer wizard). Therefore, a test with the new drives could help in the analysis of the potential root cause for this interesting behavior…!

Herbert

 

[davebot 0.9]

Herbert, thanks for helping me debug this!

To your questions: yes! these are the old disks with all the "old" data. I wondered if there might be some ties to the old disks because of that. And yes, I did a migration, instead of a clean install. I plan to opt for a clean install the next time.

I work on software in my day job, but when it comes to issues like these, I'm a bit of a noob. I appreciate all the help I've been getting here.

When I get time in the next couple days, I will setup my new OWC ThunderBay 4 Mini enclosure with my 4 SSDs -- and then copy files from the two system disks that we have been discussing. Then I will replace those old disks with two new HDDs -- and see whether things change.

David

 

[herbert7265]

I work on software in my day job, but when it comes to issues like these, I'm a bit of a noob.

Now you made me laugh... you work on software while I barely can spell "computer" and "software"...!

Again, I may be totally wrong, but potentially there is still a "connection" to the old drives, "caused" by the migration. Personally I have never used the migration feature, I always set up my (new) computer with a clean install. Yes, it takes longer, but I avoid potential topics, I get to know the new computer and OS, and I can also clean data and everything at that moment (top priority as my wife uses the same computer and she is not very consequent in such topics!).

But you should be able to figure out if the migration caused your problems as soon as you run the drive enclosure with the new disks.

Good luck with your upcoming activities and maybe keep us posted about the results.

Herbert