I have a USB-powered cooling pad under my MacBook Pro. When I close the lid to put my MacBook to sleep, I would like the cooling pad to turn off. In other words, I would like the MacBook to cut power to the USB port that the cooling pad is plugged into, or alternatively, both USB ports. Anyone know if this is possible?
I notice that the same question has been asked for Windows 7.
Best Answer
According to Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB the only way to turn off power to the USB ports is to turn off the Mac, power will remain while the Mac is sleeping.
A work around for this is changing what your Mac Does when you close the lid. You can reconfigure your MacBook to go into a different safe sleep mode when you close the lid, as opposed to normal sleep. This is very similar to the hibernate feature available for Windows PC and would result in USB power being off.
The only con is that you would have to press the power button to start your mac when you open it. And it would take more time to get the Mac back to where you left off at, as it reloads the contents of RAM from disk.
You can change your Macs sleep-mode as indicated in Set newer portable Macs' sleep mode provided by MacWorld.
It appears that sleep mode 1 would enable your USB ports to be powered off when closing the lid of the MacBook.