Summary: In this blog, we’ll share a variety of D-I-Y methods on how to resolve external hard drive sleep problems on Mac. And don’t worry about your data stored on Mac external hard drive having the ‘sleep problem’. Download the free trial of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac. Recover the data from hard drives on Mac systems running on macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, or earlier.
Activate your sleeping external hard drive by reconnecting it to your Mac. The drive will now be visible in Finder, and you can access the storage medium for read-write operation.
With the external hard drive connected, reboot your Mac to fix any system misconfiguration, error, or otherwise. It’ll revive the inactive external storage drive, and you can use it as usual.
To resolve Mac external hard drive sleep issue, correct the default sleep setting from the Energy Saver window. Steps are as follows:
2. From the Energy Saver window, deselect “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” checkbox in Battery and Power Adapter panel.
Now, your external hard disk will remain active. This setting won’t affect SSD, as it doesn’t have any moving component.
Incompatible hard drive software can prevent macOS from performing correctly. So, uninstall the driver from your Mac. Next, visit the manufacturer’s website and download the latest, compatible driver. Now, install the driver to fix the external hard drive sleep problem.
Bugs in Mac OS X or macOS may also result in the external hard drive sleep problem. Update or upgrade the operating system to the latest version to patch up the issue. Steps are as follows:
For macOS High Sierra, Sierra, El Captain, or an earlier version, perform the following:
If you have Mac OS X Lion or Snow Leopard, execute the following:
To fix any unknown hard drive issues, try repairing the Mac storage drive. Steps are as follows:
Or else, use file system consistency check (fsck) command in Single User Mode as explained next:
Read More: Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Create a backup of your external hard drive before performing this fix. Once you have backed up all your valuable data, perform the following steps:
We hope this post will help you resolve your external hard drive sleep problem. Troubleshoot by reconnecting the external hard drive or rebooting your Mac. Go to Energy Saver window from System Preferences and ensure you deselect “Put hard disk to sleep when possible” checkbox. If the issue persists, try reinstalling hard drive software. Also, install the latest version of macOS.
In case the issue is with your external storage drive, repair the drive by using First Aid or fsck command. As a last resort, back up the drive, erase, then restore the backed up data. In any accidental data loss scenario, use the best Mac data recovery software to salvage your lost data.
Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.
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This article is very usefull. It really helps me resolve the issue!!! Keep doing the great work!!
Thanks for your kind words and for sharing your experience with us, Brian!
My Toshiba external hard drive always went in sleep mode after around 15-20 minutes of inactivity. By the option “Tweak macOS SleepSettings” I’m able to resolve the issue. Thanks for sharing such informative article!
Thanks for the appreciation, Rachid!
Every time I connect my external drive to copy backups or some other functions, after sometime it went to sleep mode and sometimes also disrupts the ongoing process! Thanks to this informative content and I will surely give a try to resolve my issue!
Hi Raven,
Hope your issue will get resolved and in case of any data loss, we recommend you to try Stellar data recovery free edition software to recover your valuable data!