You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

After Mac crash, external drive freezes....

I have a 2019 Macbook Pro running Big Sur (up to date). I have an external drive that I use to store files and libraries as a backup to the Macbook. My son took a ton of pictures over the weekend and I wanted to go through his SD card and choose which pictures I wanted to keep. Because my Macbook does not have these extra ports (only 2 USB-C), I jumped on my daughter's iMac. Hers is a 2011 and on High Sierra. I went through the card and did a drag and drop onto my external drive. Everything seemed to be fine until I wanted to eject the drive. It would not eject. I tried to relaunch Finder. I tried to log out and log back in.... it wasn't having ANY of it. Then things decided to freeze...completely..leaving the only option to manually turn the thing off.


I jumped back to my Macbook and plugged the drive into my hub (goes into a USB-C). I was able to open the drive with no issues....and a few seconds later, everything froze and I got the beach ball of death. I could not force quit anything. I manually turned my Macbook off and turned it back on. Again...when I tried to open a folder in my external drive, it caused the beach ball. I put it back over on my daughter's computer and although it stayed open a bit longer, it eventually froze hers up, as well.


I booted into recovery and ran the disk utility on my external. It stated it could not be verified completely and there were two codes given: 69842 and 69845. I have no idea how to fix this. The drive shows on my mac and I can open it and see folders, but there is no getting into the folders without a freeze.


Any thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Posted on Sep 27, 2021 8:31 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 28, 2021 9:24 AM

Hello carrie640,


Welcome to Apple Support Communities!


We understand that you're unable to access folders and files on your external hard drive because doing so is causing your Mac to be unresponsive. We'd like to help.


Have you tried restarting your Mac and connecting your external hard drive using a different port or cable?


Here are some things you can try If a USB device doesn’t work with Mac. And here's how to Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac.


Take care.

Similar questions

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 28, 2021 9:24 AM in response to carrie640

Hello carrie640,


Welcome to Apple Support Communities!


We understand that you're unable to access folders and files on your external hard drive because doing so is causing your Mac to be unresponsive. We'd like to help.


Have you tried restarting your Mac and connecting your external hard drive using a different port or cable?


Here are some things you can try If a USB device doesn’t work with Mac. And here's how to Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac.


Take care.

After Mac crash, external drive freezes....

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.