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Why does my external USB hard drive (bus powered) keep making noise long after it's unmounted? I am using macOS 14.3.1.

The noise is very similar to, or the same as, that the drive makes when writing data into it. The activity light never flashes in this state. This noise continues for many minutes.

My question is very similar to this other question:

But the difference is that the LED doesn't flash in my case. In the above thread, the advice was: Don't unplug the hard drive until the noise ceases.

But I thought it's always safe to unplug the drive after it's unmounted and it would be very inconvenient if you needed to wait for many minutes.

Is there any trick to put the drive to the idle state right away?

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  • It very much depends on your device. Some may need time to sync its internal buffer and while at that it's like they're working when mounted.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Apr 1 at 18:30
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    I suppose it could for example be SMR drive doing it's maintenance. Post CrystalDiskInfo screenshot or similar that reports features.
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented Apr 1 at 18:35
  • Apple chooses to keep write caching on for removable media. I don't use macOS so I don't know if this can be changed to speed up writes.
    – harrymc
    Commented Apr 1 at 20:20
  • Thank you all for your inputs! I'll investigate this further on the basis of your comments and edit my question. I'll try to come back here in a week.
    – Ryo
    Commented Apr 2 at 22:41

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