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Why Does My Mac Recognize exFAT External Drive Slow After Being Plugged In?

I frequently need to move files between my Mac book and my PC. This has been the case for about 7 years now. In that time, I have had 3 Exfat formatted hard drives, two mac books, and 3 PC's. Every Exfat formatted hard drive can be read with in a few seconds if not instantly on ANY PC I plug them into. However, EVERY mac I plug those external hard drives into, it takes 45 mins (I timed it) for both my 2013 Macbook Air and my brand new Mackbook Pro (that is about a month old) to register that the external hard drive is plugged in. Is there anything I can do to fix this problem?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Vain Rowe

Vain Rowe

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Quite frankly, Mac reads external hard drives with non-Apple file systems slower than the drive formatted with the Apple file system. So it seems normal that your Macs take so long to register the drive after being plugged in. Besides, provided that you got two external hard drives for data backup, you can format one drive to the Mac file system and remain the other one as exFAT formatted, of course.

Finally, files saved on an exFAT external hard drive can be moved onto the Mac-formatted drive and vice versa. If you stop the drive reading&writing work and properly eject it on your Mac before the disconnection, there are few possibilities that you get any disk corruption (neglecting the truth that all drives are going to corrupt after long use)

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