External hard drive spinning even when Mac is off

[Cybernettr]

I have an 8 TB Seagate hard drive connected to my Mac. Naturally, when my Mac is accessing data on it, I hear it spinning. However, the odd thing is, sometimes I can hear it spinning softly (or at least a fan inside it) even when the Mac is shut down and turned off! I’ve heard of cases where nefarious agencies (like the NSA or FBI) planted incriminating evidence on people’s hard drives in order to frame them. I don’t think that is happening in my case, but at the very least, this is a power waste. In there a known reason why it should be doing this? Unfortunately, modern hard drives don’t come with an on/off switch, a serious omission in my view.

 

[chscag]

That doesn't make any sense. How is the 8 TB Seagate powered? Is it USB only or does it have a built in AC power supply?

Also, you say the Mac is shut down. How? Put it to sleep or completely powered off?

 

[pm-r]

In there a known reason why it should be doing this? Unfortunately, modern hard drives don’t come with an on/off switch, a serious omission in my view.

It sounds as if you have one of those NSA or FBI Spy on the user type hard drives you mentioned that are recording and reporting on all your activities, so maybe just disconnect it when you ShutDown your Mac. That will stop all the spying and save all that wasted electricity, unless it has its own power supply to power the fan.

But on the other hand, maybe it is only its fan running...


- Patrick
=======

 

[Cybernettr]

No, my Mac was completely shut down today using the shut down command (not merely asleep). However, when I came in to the room to turn the Mac on, I heard the Seagate running.

This has happened on more than one occasion, but normally, when I shut down my Mac, all activity on connected hard drives shuts down as well (as would be expected). The drive is a regular desktop drive that has its own power cord as well as a USB connection to the Mac. Like I said, at the very least, this is a power waste.

I just wanted to know if this was common, if anyone else had this experience and perhaps if there was a technical reason why it might happen. From the comments, I get the impression that this is a fairly unusual situation.

 

[chscag]

The drive is a regular desktop drive that has its own power cord as well as a USB connection to the Mac. Like I said, at the very least, this is a power waste.

Very likely the fan inside the drive is controlled by firmware. As long as the drive is plugged in to power, it probably cycles the fan on and off for cooling. You might have to remove the drive from AC power when it's not in use.

 

[Horsa]

A similar thing happens with my set-up. I have an old spinny HDD in a mains-powered USB SATA cradle, that I use for my TM backups. It has no fan. If this drive is already spinning when I power down my machine, it can "fail to get the memo" that shutdown has occurred, and carry on spinning. Fortunately, in my case the cradle has a power switch. I just have to remember to switch it back on when I power up again. These days, though, I rarely power down: just put the machine into 'sleep' mode overnight - that seems to sort the problem: the external drive always seems to respond to the sleep condition and shuts itself off like a good boy.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...However, the odd thing is, sometimes I can hear it spinning softly (or at least a fan inside it) even when the Mac is shut down and turned off!

Why do you consider this to be an "odd" thing?

I currently own over half a dozen external hard drives. In the past I've owned many many more. In fact, I regularly wrote the "storage" chapter for The Macintosh Bible, and I was one of the first people to BUILD my own external hard drive for the Macintosh (which I wrote, and had an article published about) back when doing that wasn't a "thing".

I've yet to encounter a single external hard drive connected to a desktop Mac (i.e. a desktop hard drive that gets power from an electrical wall outlet, not a portable hard drive powered by one's laptop) that automatically shuts off when you shut down the Mac that it is attached to. In every single case the external hard drive had to be turned off separately via a power switch on the external drive's case.

So there is nothing odd about your external hard drive still being on after you have shut down your Mac.

 

[Cybernettr]

I guess it found it to be odd because usually the external drives did seem to shut down when I shut down my Mac, but on occasion I would walk into the room in the middle of the night or the next morning and hear it running. It was the intermittent nature of the thing that threw me off.

 

[IWT]

I deeply understand your fears and concerns @Cybernettr. I think you can take solace from the many comments above.

For my part, I confirm that my External Hard Drives, when powered by mains electricity from a wall socket, regularly either start spinning or, far more often, the internal fan powers on & off. This is to dissipate heat.

I am trying to reassure you that this is a normal experience. It responds to external temperature and its internal circuits may also cause temporary spinning of the internal drive; probably initiated by the firmware that controls the EHD. And at 8TB, it will have these controls built in.

Of course, you could switch off the power to it after correctly ejecting it from your Mac if you are so concerned.

Personally, I don't think there is anything to worry about.

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

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.

 

[pm-r]

I guess it found it to be odd because usually the external drives did seem to shut down when I shut down my Mac, but on occasion I would walk into the room in the middle of the night or the next morning and hear it running. It was the intermittent nature of the thing that threw me off.

If this Seagate model is similar to the one that you have, it seems that it has some excellent energy-saving features so excess power consumption certainly is not a concern:

For power consumption, when you connect the Seagate Expansion 8TB with USB at first it goes up to 18 watts then down to about 7 watts, dropping down to just under 6 watts on idle at first. During file transfer, it goes up to 8 watts at start, then averages about 7.2 watts for the remainder. After a bit of idling, the power drops down to about 5.1 watts

POWER UP- Huge Seagate Expansion 8TB External HDD - Techspin

The Seagate Expansion 8TB drive certainly offers a lot for a great price, delivering decent quality with huge storage at a budget price.

www.techspinreview.com

As mentioned, you could always add an inline power switch or power it from a small switchable power bar, and just turn it off when you ShutDown your Mac after dismounting it of course.

- Patrick
=======

 

[Cybernettr]

The drive in question is a Seagate Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC, Laptop And Mac, 1-Year Rescue Service (STGY8000400), Black. It got 4 1/2 stars on Amazon, although I know that doesn’t mean anything, because many products get a high rating on Amazon that aren’t much good.

To ensure it isn’t always running and I just didn’t notice, I just shut down my Mac to test it and it was totally silent – I even put my ear up against it.

It helps to know that different brands and price ranges of hard drives have different qualities. I can see why the thing would be running while the Mac is in use, but not in the middle of the night after the Mac has been shut down for several hours. I guess it’s just an idiosyncrasy of this particular brand. So by that measure, this is not necessarily what you would call “normal” behavior, unless you mean normal for that particular brand/model.

My power strip is currently behind my desk and not that accessible, so I will have to figure out a way to get at it more easily to manually switch it off every night, or else clamp down the power cord so that when I unplug it from the HD, it doesn’t slither behind my desk so that I have to get on my hands and knees to retrieve it in the morning.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQJBSQL/?tag=macforums0e4-20

 

[MacInWin]

You said:

It helps to know that different brands and price ranges of hard drives have different qualities. I can see why the thing would be running while the Mac is in use, but not in the middle of the night after the Mac has been shut down for several hours. I guess it’s just an idiosyncrasy of this particular brand. So by that measure, this is not necessarily what you would call “normal” behavior, unless you mean normal for that particular brand/model.

Consider this: When you power on the Mac, the drive mounts. To be able to do that, it has to be powered on so that when the Mac signals through the port to see if a drive is there to be mounted, it can respond. So the manufacturer has the drive constantly on to provide that response. That's not unusual at all. And although very quiet, maybe even with the spinning part powered down, the electronics need to run to be able to do that. Hence, when heat gets going, it runs the fans to cool down. Nothing nefarious or unusual about that at all. You are worrying about something that is absolutely normal and expected.

As for powering it off at night, I would say not to bother. The power consumed is trivial and the hassle of having to remember to power the drive on every time you boot the Mac will become annoying quickly. Add to that the fact that most electronics fail on power on or off (look up "inrush current" to find out why) and it makes little sense to power off the drive at all.

Just get on with life. This minor issue isn't worth the effort to worry about.

 

[Cybernettr]

Nothing nefarious or unusual about that at all.

Thanks. My statement about nefarious activity was basically a joke and some here seem to be taking it seriously! LOL

Again, I don’t think this was happening to me (I’m not that important) but some have found reason to be concerned when they hear the hard drive spinning in the middle of the night even when the computer is not in use.

I made that statement because at least one person in the news did literally say that they had been framed, and the reason they knew it is that they could hear their hard drive spinning up in the middle of the night. (It doesn’t have to be by the government, it could be the work of hackers, etc.) So if this is a misconception and such behavior is totally ordinary, normal and unconcerning, it’s nice to know that.

 

[MacInWin]

I made that statement because at least one person in the news did literally say that they had been framed, and the reason they knew it is that they could hear their hard drive spinning up in the middle of the night. (It doesn’t have to be by the government, it could be the work of hackers, etc.) So if this is a misconception and such behavior is totally ordinary, normal and unconcerning, it’s nice to know that.

I sense a strong paranoia in that claim. Black stealth helicopters, secret signals from the government, illuminati, Freemasons, whatever. Bottom line is that externally powered drives just run all the time. Those powered by the USB port shut down when the port is off (e.g., when the Mac is fully powered down).

 

[Cybernettr]

I sense a strong paranoia in that claim.

That’s what I thought, just on the basis of my own experience with hard drives LOL!