The assumption that udisks does wakes up sleeping drives seems to be wrong, since when using this script, the drive will spin up after a while: $ cat /usr/local/bin/gvfst-rvm #!/bin/bash gvfst_sudo="" if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then gvfst_sudo="sudo" fi case $1 in status) if test -f /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors/udisks2.monitor; then echo "enabled" else echo "disabled" fi ;; start) $gvfst_sudo mv /root/udisks2.monitor /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors ;; stop) $gvfst_sudo mv /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors/udisks2.monitor /root ;; *) echo "gvfs tool to disable and enable usage of udisks2 remote volume monitor" echo "gvfst-rvm [start|stop|status]" ;; esac exit $ pacman -Ql gvfs | grep gvfsd gvfs /usr/lib/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-archive gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-burn gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-cdda gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-computer gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-dav gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-dnssd gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-ftp gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-fuse gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-http gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-localtest gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-metadata gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-network gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-recent gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-sftp gvfs /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash gvfs /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/gvfsd-fuse-tmpfiles.conf gvfs /usr/share/man/man1/gvfsd-fuse.1.gz gvfs /usr/share/man/man1/gvfsd-metadata.1.gz gvfs /usr/share/man/man1/gvfsd.1.gz When Mate or Xfce is running, all running gvfs daemons are stopped by $ killall gvfsd gvfsd-metadata gvfsd-trash on my machine, but they will be automatically restarted after a while. However, Xfce isn't the problem, thunar doesn't have a hard dependency to gvfs, but Cinnamon's nemo and Mate's caja have got. At the moment I can't continue, but I keep an eye on it. Regards, Ralf