Stop macOS from accessing external drive at night
I have Mac Mini Mid 2011 with macOS 10.13.5 with a data drive. When I wake up at night, the drive is running. I ran fs_usage
and was surprised to find macOS accessing the drive a lot.
How do I stop macOS from spinning the drive, except when accessed by a human, or at least not at certain hours when I sleep? Can Spotlight/macOS be configured to lay off the drive at night?
00:01:10 fsgetpath /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000022 mds
00:01:10 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000015 Finder
00:01:10 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000017 Finder
00:08:59 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000019 backupd-help
00:39:54 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000031 diskspaced
00:39:54 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000081 diskspaced
00:39:54 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000014 diskspaced
01:08:47 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000017 backupd-help
02:08:35 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000020 backupd-help
03:08:40 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000033 backupd-help
04:04:09 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000019 fontworker
04:04:39 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000015 fontworker
04:11:01 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000032 backupd-help
05:11:56 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000052 backupd-help
06:05:23 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000030 backupd-help
06:33:52 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000017 fontworker
06:34:15 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000020 fontworker
06:34:48 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000014 fontworker
06:36:23 fsgetpath /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000012 revisiond
06:36:23 fsctl /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000010 revisiond
06:36:23 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000023 revisiond
06:36:23 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000011 revisiond
06:36:23 lstat64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000010 revisiond
06:36:23 lstat64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000008 revisiond
06:36:23 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000007 revisiond
06:36:23 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000012 deleted
06:36:23 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000005 deleted
06:36:23 lstat64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000009 deleted
(...)
06:36:23 getattrlist /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000055 AOSHeartbeat
06:36:25 statfs64 /Volumes/FOOBAR 0.000006 df
06:36:30 HFS_update /Volumes/FOOBAR/..V100/../db.sqlite-wal launchd
I believe the best solution would be mounting and unmounting the drive to completely ensure no activity from the OS or any other rogue processes.
There is an already built solution that is paid:
Following this guide can help with more advanced settings how to unmount and mount the drive.
A free Solution would be combining
Apple Script disk mounting with Time scheduling to execute script