An external hard drive or SDD can be very useful with a Mac that has a dispirited - content interior drive . Some Mac laptop users routinely keep an extraneous drive plugged in , and they may have come across a trouble with unmounting that can be easily solved with sleep configurations found in the Energy Saver or Battery druthers panelling ( look on your translation of macOS ) .
If your drive has its own baron adapter that plugs into an AC outlet , you almost certainly have n’t encountered this site with either a laptop or desktop Mac . The AC power keeps the drive running even when your Mac goes to sleep .
However , if you ’re using a bus - power drive — one that gets its juice from a USB or Thunderbolt 3 port of your Mac , or a connected hub — you’re able to twine up with preferences that power down the drive and thus unmount it without right safeguards .
Energy Saver in Mojave offers an array of options; the top two are the ones to focus on.IDGBig Sur’s Battery preference pane has a single setting to modify.
( A side while of advice : This can also sometimes happen when a USB or Thunderbolt overseas telegram is in the midst of failing , particularly if your cause unmounts randomly at other times . Swap in another cable to see if the behavior goes away . )
This is typically an issue only with a Mac laptop computer , and not a desktop , as laptops are designed to reduce wear and tear on the battery , even when they ’re plugged into power . And not all drive work the same : lector report that some driving recognize sleep mode and properly power down , while others lose the connexion with the Mac , resulting in an wrongdoing when it wakes back up .
In macOS 10.15 Catalina and earlier , the Energy Saver orientation pane ’s Power check has two separate options you should configure ; in macOS 11 Big Sur , see to the Battery preference pane ’s Power Adapter vista :
Energy Saver in Mojave offers an array of options; the top two are the ones to focus on.IDGBig Sur’s Battery preference pane has a single setting to modify.
In all version of macOS , enable “ Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the showing is off ”
In Catalina and to begin with , disable “ Put concentrated disks to sleep when possible ”
Energy Saver in Mojave offer an array of options ; the top two are the ones to focus on .
Big Sur ’s Battery preference pane has a exclusive mise en scene to modify .
The first scope keep on your Mac from going to log Z’s while plugged in unless you explicitly choose > eternal sleep . This way , you’re able to exclude your drive manually before cast the Mac to log Z’s . While this add together cognitive overhead , it will prevent driveway integrity problems .
The 2nd option disables macOS from undertake to put hard magnetic disk drives ( HDDs ) to sleep ; it has no effect on SSDs . An outside HDD may aright respond to this effort by the Mac to dilute usage that can reduce its life-time , but apparently not all HDDs interpret macOS ’s program line correctly , so it can cause an unintentional unmounting , too .
With a reinvigorated external drive , you’re able to test which of the two preferences should be used separately or together , and then use Disk Utility ’s First Aid feature to see that the effort ’s lucid structure remains intact if its loudness or loudness unmount incorrectly during testing .
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