I have a 24-TB My Book Duo external drive (WDBFBE0240JBK-EESN) and I use it with my 2023 M2 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma 14.0 (23A344).
This is my second unit. It was sent to me as a replacement by Western Digital when the first one gave me the same issues this one is giving me.
Basically, the drive constantly goes to sleep. The only way for it not to go to sleep is uninterrupted activity on my part. What I mean with “uninterrupted” is not simply having a program/app/software use a file within the drive. That’s not enough and the drive WILL go to sleep in the middle of a video editing session, with the video project still opened and the timeline active, if I simply browse the Internet or look at my emails for a minute and then go back to the video editing software.
The issue is so bad that if I open, say, 10 pictures that are in some folder in said drive and look at them with macOS “Preview”, displaying them all at once in the same window, and I pause at the third picture for more than 10 seconds, when I try to then see the fourth one, the drive will need to come back from sleep mode and I’ll hear the boot-up sound and I’ll have to wait for a few seconds to actually see the picture.
I’ve tried to format the drive several times in all known formats (especially ex-FAT, APFS and JHFS+), to use different cables of both USB C and Thunderbolt (3 and 4) technology, and, obviously, the Sleep Timer is set to “off” in the WD Drive Utilities app and “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” in the Battery section of macOS settings is set to “Never”.
Hi @tycooko,
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask
After three days, the WD support has written me to recommend to turn off the sleep timer in Drive Utilities and set “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” to “Never”. This is how poor their support is.
I still need help with this.
