USB drives causing Tahoe to hang/freeze

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USB drives causing Tahoe to hang/freeze

Since upgrading to Tahoe, USB drives appear to be causing the finder to hang/freeze after sleep.

As far as I can tell, this happens whenever any application attempts to access the drives after the machine has woken from sleep. Finder hangs, relaunching the Finder does not work. Same issue regardless of USB A or C, SSD or hard drive. Unplugging the devices sometimes ends the hang. Issue has been the same on 26.1 and 26.2.

Mac Mini M2/16gb.

Mac mini, macOS 26.2

Posted on Dec 17, 2025 6:48 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 17, 2025 6:59 AM in response to Dzerij

How are the drive(s) formatted? FWIW, I routinely use a bunch of Samsung SSDs (1-4 TB, all formatted APFS, some TM backups and some regular storage) with my Mac running 26.2, and have had no issues with them.

Are they excluded from Spotlight indexing (they should be, by default)? Encrypted with a 3rd party utility? (Mine are all encrypted, either by TM or as set up in Disk Utility.)

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode, which disables 3rd party extensions and performs some system cleanup.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

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