The distinction between unmounting and ejecting is not always a clear one. There can be countless background processes that do the same. Years ago, just launching an Open or Save dialogue would cause a mounted external drive to spin up (as the Open/Save dialogue box has to show you all volumes you might want to save something to or open from). Lot's of things can pull a HDD out of sleep (aka spin up). You have no real control over whether a mounted HDD is asleep (mounted but spun down) or awake (mounted and spun up) besides checking or unchecking the option to "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" (under Energy Saver in System Preferences). There are three 'things' that can be done to a connected HDD: 1) put it to sleep (aka spin down but keep mounted), 2) unmount, 3) eject. At least I just reproduced it with three different drives of mine (two of them FW and one USB, all different brands). I think so far that is expected behaviour. The unmounted and ejected drive spins down, Which it is what it is doing, and that means spinning up all connected disks to read what volumes exist on that disk. When you launch Disk Utility, it quickly displays the message 'Loading Disks'. Some write scripts to stop the drives, but that's beyond my pay grade.
I have read many threads on Mac forums where people have the same problem. The best advice I could get was "pull the plug" or let the disk run whenever it chooses to for whatever reason it may be. However, at this point I can only suggest you contact Seagate support.Īt this point I have not scheduled any backups, but do them manually, because I did not want to add another complication.Īpple blames the Seagate and Seagate blames the Mac without being specific. You cannot accomplish this bey ejecting directly from the Desktop.Īnother thought is maybe you have scheduled backups configured, which are waking it. Howver, Seagate Backup+ is till bold, but by righ-clicking you can choose "eject" and the drive will be truly ejected. In the picture below, note how Seagate01 is no longer bold, because the volume has been ejected. After unmounting the volume, Seagate01 is not longer bold. (Not ejected) and its volume Seagate01 is also in bold (mounted). In the picture below, please note how the drive Seagate Backup+ is in bold.
After ejecting from the Desktop by righ-clicking, the drive is still mounted, only its volume(s) have been unmounted, and you still can eject the drive itself. That's when it spins down and I can safely unplug it.Īs for "ejecting" by right clicking on the drive's disk image on the Desktop, that is just the same as unmounting the disk in DU< as evidenced by checking Disk status in DU. In DU, I can then right-click on the drive itself and "eject" the drive. As I said, in case of the Seagate, it won't even spin down. In Disk Utility, you can choose to unmount the external drive's volume. You unmount a volume, and you eject a disc/drive/peripheral.
I don't understand your statement about unmounting the volume and then ejecting the disk - one and the same thing for this drive. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but for me this drive has been a lot of reliable storage at a low price. But there is no power nmanagement feature on the Mac version. You can turn the drive status light off, so that you can pretend the drive is off. The Dashboard app allows a small icon on the desktop, which is the only use I've found for it, but it hasn't caused any problems. Nobody, and that includes Apple experts, can tell me what keeps waking up my external drive. Wakes promptly when needed and doesn't do anything otherwise. The unmounted and ejected drive spins down, but only for a short while. The unmounted drive keeps relentlessly spinning. It also spins up every time I launch Disk Utility. Mine starts spinning up randomly, for example if I click on a Web link in my browser. I've had it for about a year and have never noticed any odd behavior. I have this same drive providing additional storage for my iMac.