Home > Questions

External HDs Slow to Mount on Mac, Any Fixes?

Hello, I have threee WD My Book HDs stored files and file backups. After I updated my Mac to OS 13, I found two of them taking a while to mount. One (1-1/2 years old and has 1.5TB of data on it out of 6TB capacity) takes 5-10 minutes and the other (4TBs and 5+ years old) uses 30 seconds to several minutes. The third one (4TBs and 5+ years old) mounts immediately on Mac as before. And I found that the two problematic HDs are running "fsck_exfat" in Activity Monitor after mounting. Does it mean something going bad on the drives? Any solutions to fix the trouble? Thanks.

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Connie Yang

Connie Yang

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

From your description, I get a rough idea of what your problem is.  The external HDDs that are slow to mount on Mac may be due to Time Machine, system issues, software conflicts, file system errors, etc. Here are my suggestions to fix the problem. Hope this helps you out.

1. Bypass Time Machine verification

You say that you use these hard drives for file backups, so what you see in Activity Monitor about the two drives doesn't mean they have any problems. It probably indicates Time Machine is verifying your external hard drives before start backing up files. You can click on the Time Machine icon in the Apple menu bar and select "Skip verification".

2. Boot Mac into Safe Mode and then connect the two drives

If that makes no changes, test the performance of the two drives in Mac Safe Mode. This is to exclude the recently installed software conflicts.

3. Connect the drives to another Mac

And you are also suggested to connect the two HDDs to another Mac that's not running macOS 13 to verify if it is the macOS Ventura problem causing the external hard drive not mounting on Mac.

4. Run First Aid to check the two HDDs

The external hard drive that takes a long time to mount on Mac can also result from file system errors. You can use Disk Utility First Aid to check and repair errors on your external hard drives.

To run Mac First Aid to repair the disk, you need to:

  1. Open "Disk Utility" in the Applications folder.
  2. Select the drive on the left sidebar.
  3. Click "First Aid" on the top.
  4. Wait for First Aid to complete checking.

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

comment monter un disque sur mac

Guide sur la façon de monter un SSD/HDD/USB Flash Drive sur Mac

Ce post fournit des méthodes efficaces pour monter le disque interne/externe sur votre Mac. Lorsque vous constatez que le disque n'est pas monté automatiquement, vous pouvez essayer ces méthodes pour le corriger, y compris les disques NTFS.

cómo recuperar datos de una tarjeta SD desmontada

¿Cómo recuperar datos eliminados y perdidos de una tarjeta SD desmontada?

Lea esta publicación para saber cómo recuperar datos de una tarjeta SD desmontada con iBoysoft Data Recovery. Además, esta publicación explica las causas y soluciones para solucionar una tarjeta SD desmontada.

How to recover data from unmountable hard drive on Mac

Recover Lost Data from Unmountable Hard Drive on Mac

External hard drive won't mount on Mac, how to recover data from unmountable or unmounted hard drives on Mac? Find fixes in this article.

Mac Data Recovery Tips