Should I eject my external SSD before sleeping my Mac?

HWTech wrote:

I don't know how macOS handles an ejected device after waking from sleep, but I do know that if you "eject" a drive within macOS (default option when using the Finder--it combines unmounting & ejecting), then the drive must be physically disconnected & reconnected before it will be seen by macOS again.

After ejecting a drive in the Finder, I left the drive physically connected and went into Disk Utility. The drive and unmounted volume were visible in Disk Utility. Mounting the volume in Disk Utility made it appear in the Finder.

There seems to be a bit of history with Macs sometimes improperly dismounting external USB drives during Sleep. While I wish that wasn't the case, you might encounter the issue.

If you do decide to eject your external SSD before putting your Mac to Sleep, I don't think there is any need for you to also unplug it. When you wake the Mac, the Mac may remember that you wanted to eject the drive, and you may need to re-mount the drive using Disk Utility. That could be a bit inconvenient.

These days, I use Lock Screen or Shut Down, and shut off my monitor. When I turn the monitor back on, a key press or mouse click gets the Mac Studio to realize that it should try talking to the monitor again.

The issue appears to be FAR more common with Bus-powered drives without an independent source of power.

When the Mac sleeps, recent Macs drop USB-power to "standby" levels. This is a fairly recent innovation, so many drive enclosures, engineered a while ago, are not prepared to degrade gracefully. Instead, they simply drop out, causing annoying disconnect issues that may require a Disk Utility Repair/FirstAid to set right again.

Servant of Cats wrote:

After ejecting a drive in the Finder, I left the drive physically connected and went into Disk Utility. The drive and unmounted volume were visible in Disk Utility. Mounting the volume in Disk Utility made it appear in the Finder.

Yes...that has also been my experience with external drives.

Servant of Cats wrote:

If you do decide to eject your external SSD before putting your Mac to Sleep, I don't think there is any need for you to also unplug it. When you wake the Mac, the Mac may remember that you wanted to eject the drive, and you may need to re-mount the drive using Disk Utility. That could be a bit inconvenient.

I don't know how macOS handles an ejected device after waking from sleep, but I do know that if you "eject" a drive within macOS (default option when using the Finder--it combines unmounting & ejecting), then the drive must be physically disconnected & reconnected before it will be seen by macOS again.

Unmounting all volumes on a drive will allow macOS to give the user an option to re-mount any of those volumes without needing to disconnect & reconnect the drive. The only way I am aware to just "unmount" a volume without also "ejecting" the drive is by using Disk Utility or by using the command line.

Yeah, don't worry about it, but there is a setting... Energy Saver>Put Hard Disks to sleep if possible.

BDAqua wrote:

Yeah, don't worry about it, but there is a setting... Energy Saver>Put Hard Disks to sleep if possible.

I don’t think that applies to SSDs who have no need to “sleep”.