High Sierra 10.13.3 update keeps/waking accessing non-mac drives

[Careless]

So I installed the latest 10.13.3 security update as of this post (Feb 28 was the install date).

 

I have two 120gb mechanical SATA drives that I have reserved for large games and various types of file storage, and they are formatted to be accessed by windows.

Prior to updating to 10.13.3, I had followed this guide (https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7942) and successfully disabled macOS from mounting the drives so that they would not show up in Finder or under usage of my High Sierra boot partition.

 

After successfully completing the latest 10.13.3 update, the drives constantly spin up, coast for a minute or two with no audible access (clicking), and then shut off... only to be spun up again. This repeats over and over, and I've checked all my settings and re-checked the guide posted above to make sure the entries still matched and were still there.

 

The drives are not mounted. They are not visible in Finder. And checking Disk Utility shows they are not accessible... yet macOS seems to want to fire them up without mounting them.

 

I monitored the Utilities/Console.app to see what messages come up when macOS is starting/stopping these drives, but cannot find anything leading to the powering of these drives- nor could I find any information on any log errors that did seem obscure via using web searches of all kinds.

 

Is there a way to tell macOS to just NOT power up/down these drives aside from the link I've posted? The Energy Saver prefpane has no effect on this.

 

I have also disabled any monitoring programs that ask for drive temperature, as I am aware that this can cause the drive to be spun up to check its current temperature reading in various macOS taskbar apps that allow the use of sensor values to initiate other computer functions like fan control, etc.

 

I have disconnected the PSU power cables from the drive temporarily, but I am hoping there is a way around this.