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Switcher Hangout (Windows to Mac)
External hard drive spinning even when Mac is off
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<blockquote data-quote="Randy B. Singer" data-source="post: 1889616" data-attributes="member: 190607"><p>When you shut down a Mac, any modern external hard drive will park its heads. The platter will continue to spin, and depending on the brand and model, it may be very quiet. You may not notice that it is still on unless the room is very quiet. </p><p></p><p>Once you have shut down your Mac, it makes no difference if you have previously unmounted your external hard drive, you can simply switch it off. </p><p></p><p>Extremely few external hard drives include cooling fans. That's too bad, because I think that they should ALL have them. Heat is the natural enemy of magnetic media. But only the very best of the best external hard drives have them. So before you conclude that the noise that you hear your external hard drive making is the fan, you should determine whether or not it even has one. </p><p></p><p>I can't tell you specifically about your hard drive because you have only told us that you have an 8TB Seagate-branded external hard drive, not the model and model number. Seagate's EXTERNAL hard drives (I'm not talking about internal mechanisms), in general, are well known to be the bottom of the barrel; slow and highly unreliable, but usually very inexpensive, especially for a high capacity drive. Almost never having internal fans for cooling, having cheap power supplies and thin nondescript plastic cases. Your drive's warranty is likely only one year. Your drive may not even have a power button, you may need to unplug it to turn it off. It's also likely to use SMR (shingled magnetic recording), a technology that increases capacity but terribly slows down performance.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Randy B. Singer, post: 1889616, member: 190607"] When you shut down a Mac, any modern external hard drive will park its heads. The platter will continue to spin, and depending on the brand and model, it may be very quiet. You may not notice that it is still on unless the room is very quiet. Once you have shut down your Mac, it makes no difference if you have previously unmounted your external hard drive, you can simply switch it off. Extremely few external hard drives include cooling fans. That's too bad, because I think that they should ALL have them. Heat is the natural enemy of magnetic media. But only the very best of the best external hard drives have them. So before you conclude that the noise that you hear your external hard drive making is the fan, you should determine whether or not it even has one. I can't tell you specifically about your hard drive because you have only told us that you have an 8TB Seagate-branded external hard drive, not the model and model number. Seagate's EXTERNAL hard drives (I'm not talking about internal mechanisms), in general, are well known to be the bottom of the barrel; slow and highly unreliable, but usually very inexpensive, especially for a high capacity drive. Almost never having internal fans for cooling, having cheap power supplies and thin nondescript plastic cases. Your drive's warranty is likely only one year. Your drive may not even have a power button, you may need to unplug it to turn it off. It's also likely to use SMR (shingled magnetic recording), a technology that increases capacity but terribly slows down performance. [/QUOTE]
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Switcher Hangout (Windows to Mac)
External hard drive spinning even when Mac is off
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