Solving the Problem of Slow External Hard Drive on Mac

External Drive Is Slow After Updating to High Sierra

"My external hard drive has been running extremely slow ever since I updated my iMac to High Sierra. It frequently gets stuck when I connect and try to browse through it, taking a long time to load content and open files. I left it disconnected for hours and tried again, but the issue persists. Now, it's warning me that the hard drive is inaccessible and needs to be formatted."

Are you also troubled by an external hard drive that has suddenly become very slow for no reason? If you want to speed up a very slow external hard drive on your Mac without losing any data and improve its performance, you've come to the right place.

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How to Recover Data from a Slow External Hard Drive

Firstly, when your external hard drive gets slower and becomes inaccessible, you need a data recovery for Mac to extract data from the Mac. And do not format the drive until a full data recovery is completed when you receive error messages indicating it needs formatting to be used.

To safely export data from a slow external hard drive on Mac, download the Mac Drive Recovery software and follow the three-step procedure.

Step 1: Search for the Lost File

On macOS Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and the latest Sonoma, select the disk location where you want to search for the missing file (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device). Then, click on the “Search for Lost Files” button.

Note: Before data recovery, it is recommended that you click “Disk Backup” on the left sidebar to back up your Mac to prevent further data loss. After the backup, the software can recover data from the Mac backup, and your computer can overwrite new data.

Step 2: Browse the scan results

Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately scan the disk volume you select and display the scanning results.

Step 3: Select the files and recover them.

From the scan results, select the files you want to preview and then hit the “Recover” button to get them back.

How do I fix a slow external hard drive on Mac OS X?

Note that many factors can affect the performance of an external hard drive on Mac OS X, causing slower file transfers or boot times. Here are a few examples.

- Logical errors and bad sectors on the external hard drive - Large application software installed on the external hard drive - Duplicate videos, images, and other files on the external drive - Running too many applications while the hard drive is in use - Overly long defragmentation processes on the external hard drive - The external hard drive being too old

Next, you will learn about the unique solutions offered by this page that will quickly resolve the issue of an external hard drive running slow on Mac after using the Mac Data Recovery Wizard to transfer all data files to a secure location.

Solution 1: Use Mac Cleaning Software to Remove Duplicate Files on External Hard Drive for Mac

Large duplicate files, such as videos, photos, and music, take up a lot of disk space, and accumulated junk can slow down your Mac's hard drive over time. So, to speed up an external hard drive on your Mac, the main action you need to take is to clean up all the duplicate files to free up some disk space.

Here, we recommend you use CleanGenius – the best Mac speedup tool to help you deal with a heavily burdened external hard drive on Mac.

Step 1: Launch CleanGenius and click on the Duplicate Files Finder;
Drag and drop the folder you want to scan, or click the Folder icon to add folders to search for duplicate files;

Step 2: Select the target folder and click the Open button to start scanning for duplicate files;

Step 3: Right-click on the found files and choose "Preview" to identify the ones you want to keep; select the duplicate files you don't need, then click Delete to remove them from your Mac.

Solution 2: Repair Disk Utility to Fix Slow External Drive Issue

Many users don't realize that using the Mac Disk Utility to repair their external hard drive can help speed it up, and it's worth trying right away.

Step 1: Press Command + S to boot your Mac into Single User Mode. Step 2: Enter the following command: **fsck -fy** Step 3: After executing the fsck command, you'll see a message indicating "file-system modified." Step 4: Now, restart your Mac to continue the repair process.

Other Tricks to Speed Up Your Mac's External Drive

1. Activity Monitor Check: By closely observing and monitoring the Mac's Activity Monitor, it sometimes helps to improve the sluggish performance of an external drive.

< strong > 2. Manage your startups: When you start up your Mac, many icons begin running in the background of the Mac OS. Managing these startups can also contribute to improving the performance of your external drive.

3. Disable visual effects: Disabling visual effects on your Mac OS can also help boost the performance of an external drive.