Keep an external drive or NAS from sleeping on your Mac

An external drive that spins down in the middle of a backup or a copy can stall the job or drop the volume. Keepresso keeps a drive awake two ways: it can keep the drive itself from idling, and it can keep your Mac awake while the drive is mounted.

Keep the drive spinning

Turn on disk keep-alive and point it at the drive, SD card, or network share you want to keep active. Keepresso writes a tiny hidden marker file to it on an interval (every five minutes by default, adjustable), which counts as activity and stops the drive spinning down. Most drives idle out around ten minutes, so a five-minute touch keeps them awake.

Keep the Mac awake while the drive is connected

Add a Volume mounted trigger for that drive, and Keepresso keeps your Mac awake the whole time it is connected, then lets it sleep once you unplug. Combine the two and a long transfer or backup runs start to finish, without the drive or the Mac dropping out.

When to use it

• A Time Machine or backup job to an external disk.
• Copying a large library to or from a NAS.
• Keeping a scratch drive or SD card responsive during an edit.