I have an external HD connected to my Mac Mini via USB, and it has issues when the Mini goes to sleep. Sometimes when I wake it up, I get the error box saying that the external HD was not ejected properly (and the partitions are not mounted), sometimes they appear to be mounted on the desktop but are unable to be accessed, and Time Machine attempts a backup but gets stuck on 1% forever. When this happens, attempting to access or unmount the drive causes Finder to freeze and it cannot be relaunched, meaning the only solution is a "hard" reboot.
Any solutions? The drive in question is a 1TB WD Green, and works fine other than the sleep issue.
I always take the care to unmount my external HDs when i put the computer to sleep.
the only reason i do that, because i don't like how the disc shuts off when the computer goes to sleep.
btw, the macbook's usb power stays on when going to sleep.
Do you know of any way to do this automatically? I've found some applescripts that work, but I was wondering if there was a more seamless method. Surely a lot of people with Minis have attached external drives?
I have my Mini connected by Firewire to an external drive and don't have these issues. For the tech heads out there, any chance the issue could be related to the USB connection?
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I would say the issue is more likely related to TimeMachine issues and/or a corrupt Spotlight metadata file. Start by turning off auto sleep in system prefs, then use Onyx to delete the Spotlight Index, walk away from the computer until the Index has rebuilt itself.
Next I would tend to delete my TM back-up and again walk away until it rebuilds itself. I am not as familiar with TM as I would like to be so if others have a better approach please jump in.
Beyond that I prefer to manually put my computers to sleep. I unmount external drives wait until I am sure all activity has stopped then turn off the drive. Next I log out and put the computer to sleep. I got into this habit during the early days with Tiger after my external failed to mount on numerous occasions. An issue that I eventually traced to Spotlight issues. Supposedly later versions of Tiger and Leopard had resolved the mount issue but Spotlight files do seem to still suffer corruption issues when drives unmount before Spotlight finishes its update.
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I don't always have my external hard drive on but when it is on I just let the computer do what it wants with it. When it goes to sleep the external hard drive shuts off and when you use the computer it turns on again and is right where you left it.
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