MacBook Air M3 Sleep & External Drives
 

I have a new MacBook Air M3 running Sequoia 15.3.1 with DisplayLink Pluggable 4K Plug & Display dock attached. The dock has 3 external hard drives attached and two monitors.

My problem occurs when the Mac goes into sleep mode, the hard drives think they have been ejected incorrectly and throw up their typical warning message. One message I could live with, but if I'm gone for more than an hour, upon my return I am greeted with 60+ error messages to clear out before I can get back to work.

My workaround is to restart the system, but I shouldn't have to do that. Is there a configuration setting that I've missed?

I'd like not to have to stop my MacBook from going into sleep mode but I don't want to risk corrupting my hard drives either.

Any advice?

Hi czarnikd,

Logically, the external drivers are connected to the USB hub inside the docking station. While the system goes to sleep mode, all peripherals are also disconnected.
I can suggest an experiment described in this article: Fixing USB disconnects on sleep on MacOS
It could be a compromise between selectively power off e.g. displays while parts of the system would be kept operational.

Regards,
Szymon

Thank you! That switch did the trick. No error messages after MacBook went to sleep.

Glad it works for you ��