External HDs Slow to Mount on Mac

Question

Level 1

6 points

External HDs Slow to Mount on Mac

Hello,

I run three external Western Digital My Book HDs used for photo/file storage and redundant back-ups of those files. Not too long after updating my Mac to OS 13 (Ventura) I noticed two of the three drives taking a while to mount. One of them takes 5-10 minutes to mount & the other 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. The third one mounts immediately just as they all used to. In trying to figure this out, I noticed in Activity Monitor that the two unmounted drives are running "fsck_exfat," which come off the Activity Monitor list after they do mount. Once mounted, the drives operate normally and with the same speed as always. My questions; is fsck always supposed to run on the external drives prior to mounting when my Mac boots/reboots? If so, why is it suddenly taking so long? Is this behavior related to the update to Ventura or just coincidental? Does it mean there's something going bad on the drives, or??? Note: the one taking the longest to mount is only 1-1/2 years old and has 1.5TB of data on it out of 6TB capacity - the other two are 4TBs and 5+ years old. If fsck shouldn't be running on those externals each time the computer boots/reboots, how do I disable fsck or prevent it from running on those drives unless I call for it?

Thanks,

Jace K.

iMac 27″, macOS 13.0

Posted on Dec 22, 2022 6:34 PM

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Answer 1

nbotros

Community Specialist

Dec 26, 2022 8:24 AM in response to goodshot

Hello goodshot,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand the importance of having this issue resolved, and we'd be happy to look into this with you. What you're seeing on the activity monitor might be related to Time Machine verifing backups. To get started, let's try to click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose "Skip verification".

If that didn't help, let's test this behavior in safe mode, in another user account on your Mac, and if possible, test your external Hard Drives with another computer. This will help us isolate this issue further.

Start up your Mac in safe mode

If you don't have another account, here's how to create a new user account on your Mac:

Add account

Create a new user or group.

Click the New Account pop-up menu (you may be asked to enter your password), then choose a type of account.

• Administrator: An administrator can add and manage other users, install apps, and change settings. The new user you create when you first set up your Mac is an administrator. Your Mac can have multiple administrators. You can create new ones, and convert standard users to administrators. Don’t set up automatic login for an administrator. If you do, someone could simply restart your Mac and gain access with administrator privileges. To keep your Mac secure, don’t share administrator names and passwords.

Change Users & Groups settings on Mac

You can also, try the steps in the following link: If your Mac runs slowly

While this support article is for help if your Mac is running slowly, the troubleshooting suggestions may also apply to what you're experiencing.

Let us know the results. Kind regards.

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Answer 2

goodshot Author

Level 1

6 points

Dec 26, 2022 5:42 PM in response to nbotros

Thanks for your kind response and suggestions. Yesterday, I connected the external to my wife's mac which is still running OS 12 and the issue persisted the same there, so likely not related to OS 13 Ventura update. I also booted in safe mode as you said and issue also still occurred there.

Re Time Machine, first off I have it set to backup "manually" and I do that on a completely separate WD My Passport drive which does not remain connected to the computer. However, I did ironically find that in Time Machine's settings (Options), only the drive that immediately mounts is shown on the excluded list. I then added the other two problem drives to the exclusion list, however when I shut down the computer and reboot, the drive I'm having the main issue with does not appear back on the excluded list. So if that's related to my slow mounting problem, is there another Time Machine related setting or fix to remedy it? I've tried to look but don't see anything obvious [to me].

Thank you.

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