Prevent Hard Disks from Sleeping in macOS 13

External mechanical hard drives and internal spinning disks can experience performance hiccups or unnecessary wear if they spin down too frequently. In macOS 13 Ventura, Apple redesigned the System Preferences into System Settings, shifting the traditional Energy Saver controls into new submenus. This guide outlines the exact settings needed to disable hard drive sleep on both desktop and laptop Macs running macOS 13, as well as an advanced Terminal method to control disk sleep timers manually.

Changing Hard Disk Sleep Settings on Desktop Macs

If you are using a desktop computer such as an iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro:

  1. Click the Apple menu () in the top-left corner and select System Settings.
  2. Scroll down the left sidebar and click Energy.
  3. Locate the toggle labeled Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
  4. Switch the toggle to the Off position.

Disabling this setting ensures that connected hard drives remain spun up while the computer is awake, eliminating delays caused by drive wake-up times.

Changing Hard Disk Sleep Settings on MacBook Models

On MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, macOS 13 nests this preference inside the Battery menu:

  1. Open the Apple menu () and select System Settings.
  2. Click Battery in the left sidebar.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the right pane and click the Options button.
  4. Locate the dropdown menu labeled Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
  5. Change the setting to Never.
  6. Click Done to save the changes.

Note: Selecting "Never" keeps external drives spinning continuously while the Mac is awake, which can increase battery consumption when running on unplugged power.

Adjusting Disk Sleep via Terminal (Advanced)

If external drives continue to sleep prematurely despite toggling the graphical interface, you can override power management behaviors using the macOS command line.

  1. Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/).

  2. To prevent hard disks from ever sleeping, enter the following command and press Return:

    sudo pmset -a disksleep 0

  3. Enter your administrator password when prompted.

Setting the disksleep value to 0 disables sleep entirely for all drives across battery, power adapter, and UPS power profiles (-a). If you want the disks to sleep after a specific duration of inactivity, replace 0 with the desired number of minutes (for example, sudo pmset -a disksleep 30 to set a 30-minute threshold).

To verify your current settings, run pmset -g and check the number assigned to the disksleep variable.