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External Drives Won't Sleep?
- Thread starter guywhoisweird
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My FW G-Drive won't unmount - at all. I eject the icon on the desktop and the icon disappears but the drive keeps spinning the same speed and when I switch it off it bleeps at me. I contacted G-Drive Technology but they just told me to test the hard disk on another OS - they weren't aware of the issue with 10.9. Also I've noticed that the drive is not mounted a significant proportion of the time I plug it in even though it is detected by the OS. I never had any issues unmounting the drive in 10.8 although I did have issues with mounting it as above, but it was much less frequent. I guess I should have tested it using USB2 but it didn't occur to me (not G Tech). I figured it could wait for 10.9.1 for a fix for this issue and the Finder hanging problem (non necessarily guaranteed) so I decided to restore 10.8. Would be keen to find out when 10.9 works properly in the above respect so it would be safe to reinstall it! ;-)
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I had a change of heart because I was reminded of the frequent crashing issues I was having under 10.8 (perhaps needed wiping and rebuilding), so upgraded again to 10.9 which has proven to be very stable so far. Not the best use of my time admittedly. After installing the updates in 10.9.0, I haven't stumbled across the Finder issue again, so whilst the FW800 issue still remains, and I have to shut down my iMac every time I want to eject a drive, overall it's less frustrating than before.
Frustrating though it may be, I'm definitely not planning to roll back to 10.8 over it. Simply because everything else is just pure bliss (Except perhaps a few nitty little issues with Mail). What helps me strengthening this view is that there's only one drive that refuses to sleep in my case, and I don't have any of the other issues referred to in this thread (i.e. drives not umnounting when they should or doing so when they should not). So even though the drive in question iOmega eGo 500GB Mac Edition) did sleep just fine in <10.9, I find the merit of Mavericks to be much greater than the eventual disadvantage that I incur from using it.
I don't know why the drives won't sleep, only because the system is *very* silent about that If only there were a significant line or two in the console about the issue, that would've helped me so much Alas
The only thing I hope is that the imminent 10.9.1 update may come to fix this issue.
The manufacturer's notes for my Seagate external drive say that it is designed to be able to run constantly. I am not sure what energy savings can be made by sleeping the drive but my guess is that it is a lot less than the cost of reducing the life of the drive by frequent spinning up and spinning down the disc.
My concern here is not about sleeping the drives, but more like how the drive will survive consistently abrupt/sudden spin down every time you pull the plug. This is especially true when it comes to FW-powered 2.5" drives.
Just Set Up a WD Thunderbolt 8TB Drive
I just set up an iMac with a WD Thunderbolt 8TB external drive for a friend. With Thunderbolt there was no problem with sleeping. So it would seem that the Firewire bus is the issue with Mavericks.
I myself have to use the Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter. My Lacie and WD external drives will not sleep as I have previously reported.
I just set up an iMac with a WD Thunderbolt 8TB external drive for a friend. With Thunderbolt there was no problem with sleeping. So it would seem that the Firewire bus is the issue with Mavericks.
I myself have to use the Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter. My Lacie and WD external drives will not sleep as I have previously reported.
For what it is worth My externals were not sleeping either until i went in System Preferences->Energy and put a checkmark in 'Put hard disks in sleep when possible'. After doing that and restarting they started sleeping when not in use. So try it to see if it makes a difference.
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Did nothing for me but perhaps I'm trying to achieve something slightly different (with unmounting/ejecting).
FWIW
I have a 2009 iMac - originally with Snow Leopard, upgraded to Lion/ML and now Mavericks and it too was having the 'external firewire drive won't sleep' issue.
I recently had to replace the internal spindle drive, so I did a fresh install of Mavericks and then a Time Machine restore of user files and applications - and now the external drive (Lacie D2 with a WD 3TB Green drive inside) is sleeping just like it used to.
I have a 2009 iMac - originally with Snow Leopard, upgraded to Lion/ML and now Mavericks and it too was having the 'external firewire drive won't sleep' issue.
I recently had to replace the internal spindle drive, so I did a fresh install of Mavericks and then a Time Machine restore of user files and applications - and now the external drive (Lacie D2 with a WD 3TB Green drive inside) is sleeping just like it used to.
No. Tried FW for one backup last night. Their icons may disappear from the desktop but they continue to spin after trying to eject them.
I just switched a old LaCie drive from USB to FW and it ejects but will not sleep automatically or if I invoke sleep. So back to really slow USB2...
FWIW, OS X 10.9.1 fixed the problem for one of my 2 MyBook Studio II drives. The other one spins down after eject, but not on sleep/idle. Back to USB.
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FW type drives may not be the only problem with sleep
My external drive is a My Book Studio Edition. It does have ports for the FW connection, but I am using the USB 2. That leaves open the question if there is some internal connection between the FW and the USB which might cause the same sleep problem to occur regardless of which port is used. I would not suspect this to be the case, but anything is possible.
My external drive is a My Book Studio Edition. It does have ports for the FW connection, but I am using the USB 2. That leaves open the question if there is some internal connection between the FW and the USB which might cause the same sleep problem to occur regardless of which port is used. I would not suspect this to be the case, but anything is possible.
10.9.1 fixed my MyBook Studio II FW sleep issue, but my Lacie 2Big will not sleep using FW via a Thunderbolt adapter. The Lacie is first in the chain. I'm using all of my USB ports, so USB is not a solution for me even though all of my external drives support USB as well as FW.
