Spin down of HDDs

Although the AppleScript I posted earlier works beautifully, I followed the other suggestion.  I deleted the com.apple.powermanagement.plist and com.apple.autowake.plist files and rebooted but never anything else in System Settings. So far,a simple deletion of those files and a reboot seems to have done the trick.  (iMac 24" 2024 and Sequoia 15.3.2)

Nope.  Doesn't last.  Back to slow spin up this morning.  Have reverted to my AppleScript.

@henryn2md 

Maybe it is a clue we can bring up to Apple, for fixing, however, interesting that it fails later. That proves there is a bug in the OS somewhere, or a third party app that causes this. Has to be.

@softraid-support Agree.  I assume that is something that SoftRaid would bring up with Apple.  Assume they will listen to you better that a simple user.

It's' clear that deleting the com.apple.powermanagement.plist and com.apple.autowake.plist files and rebooting is a temporary fix that at some point reverts back to the problem.  

The AppleScript program, a touch ever 20 seconds, simply doesn't give the ThunderBay raid array time to sleep.  And I'm not sure that a drive/drives is/are actually sleeping.  But I do see the lights on the front of the array stepping through some/all of the drives before the array is ready again.

Would love to hear what Apple has to say.

@henryn2md 

In order for Apple to fix this, they will need a reproducing system. I do not see this in house.

If you do a temporary "clean install" does this problem appear? (No rush, I know you are not just sitting around waiting for computer bugs to be fixed) Some instructions below.

Its possible it is a third party utility or app triggering this, but I do not know what.

Run Disk Utility
Click on your startup internal
Click + volume
Name/save your volume
Shut down
Startup in recovery mode (hold the power button)
Select Options
Select "reinstall MacOS"
Point the installer to your new volume and install
Do NOT migrate data, etc. Use the same Admin name.
install SoftRAID. It will run. You can even activate on both systems.

You can delete this system any time (with Disk Utility), it independent of everything else.

@softraid-support Sorry for delay in responding.  Your recommendation was just much much that I wanted to do. I did update to SoftRaid 8.5 which in the release notes says to do a volume verify.  I think that is primarily for SSD but I ran it anyway.

I also did the Mac OS update to 15.4 that was released the other day.  It appears that either the volume verification or the update to 15.4 has fixed the problem.  I haven't been running my AppleSoft app and so far I have had no delays when accessing  the ThunderBay RAID array.  I may have just jinxed it by saying all of this but so far so good.  So either Apple made a tweak in 15.4 or the verification did the trick.  If it reverts to the previous problem, I'll let you know.

Nope.  Back again this morning.  Have started running the AppleScript app again.

Yep, issue also came back for me on a M1 MacStudio Ultra 15.6. This stuff is going on for way too long. Switch to a 10 GbE NAS and the problem is gone. My OWC Thunderbay Is now switched on once a week for a backup. Would certainly not purchase one again.

@steve223 

Its "gone" as you are now running Linux, essentially. This is a MacOS issue, which hopefully will be flushed out soon. We sell thousands of Thunderbays to satisfied users, but when afflicted by this issue, I can understand your feelings.