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VitoBotta

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
1,020
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Espoo, Finland
I have an M1 mini and 4 external drives connected to it, two hard drives via a USB 3 hub and 2 SSDs connected one to the hub and the other to one of the USBC ports. Every time I restart the computer it takes several minutes for the drives to actually mount. They eventually do, and from that moment on everything works without any problems whatsoever, but at the startup they take ages to mount. what can explain this? thanks
 
I have a 2018 i7 Mini with 64gb RAM and 2tb internal SSD. I also have two 2tb USB SSD's connected all the time. It also boots very slowly. Am thinking that the 64gb RAM goes through some kind of test at startup maybe? But the dock and menu bar show up first, then there's a long delay (not "several minutes", but it feels like a long time, maybe 30 to 60 seconds) before the external disks and folders on the desktop appear.

I just got in the habit of starting up/logging in and then going off and doing something else for a few minutes. Reminds me of the old PowerPC days. 🤣
 
Yes, like I said, it takes around 30 to 60 seconds for my two SSD's to appear after the computer boots. I'd guess yours takes longer because you also have spinning hard drives.

I don't have an explanation, sorry. But it's possible that one reason (in my case) is that one of the SSD's has around 50 million files in deeply nested folders.
 
"two hard drives via a USB 3 hub and 2 SSDs connected one to the hub"

Is it a POWERED hub (with it's own power supply block)
or
Is it a NON-powered hub?
 
Are the external drives formatted in APFS format? If yes, it’s possible that macOS is running the trim command which can take some time. A quick way to check is by running this command in Terminal (you can change the date)

log show --predicate "processID == 0" --start "2022-12-24" | grep spaceman

I have a Seagate 2TB external HDD (SMR drive) which takes a while to mount because of Trimming.
 
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Are the external drives formatted in APFS format? If yes, it’s possible that macOS is running the trim command which can take some time. A quick way to check is by running this command in Terminal (you can change the date)

log show --predicate "processID == 0" --start "2022-12-24" | grep spaceman

I have a Seagate 2TB external HDD (SMR drive) which takes a while to mount because of Trimming.

Does the TRIM command get executed also on external drives? I thought that by default this is not the case?
 
Still having this issue, and I found threads on Apple forums about it. I am at a loss with this. The only way I managed to get it "a bit" faster is with this script I run manually after login:

Bash:
#!/bin/bash

diskutil list | grep Volume | grep -E --invert-match '(Macintosh|Preboot|Recovery|VM)' | grep -Eo '(disk\d+s\d+)' | while read disk;
do
  diskutil apfs unlockVolume $disk -passphrase xxx
  diskutil mount $disk
done

Still, it takes a while.
 
Do the drives mount faster/normal if you connect/turn them on after your Mac boots?

I cannot find the article again at the moment. However, I read something months ago that Apple Silicon boot security would block external drives.* I think, I came across the article following attempts to figure out why my external drive (bus powered but always switched on) would not show up at all — I thought it was maybe dead. So, now I turn the drive off after powering down my Mac, then turn the drive back on after boot and login.

I do also vaguely recall reading something about this behavior changing after updating/upgrading to newer macOS versions. However, perhaps Apple Silicon boot security is causing a delay as it possibly ignores the drives until login.

* The only results I am seeing are for booting from an external drive. But the restriction I am speaking of is not relevant to whether an OS is installed on the external or not.
 
I have an M1 mini and 4 external drives connected to it, two hard drives via a USB 3 hub and 2 SSDs connected one to the hub and the other to one of the USBC ports.
USB is a bag of hurt on Macs, especially on Mx Macs and the more recent versions of macOS. One of the reasons all my external drives are Thunderbolt.
 
Yes, like I said, it takes around 30 to 60 seconds for my two SSD's to appear after the computer boots.

So, this is interesting. I no longer have this problem on my 2018 Mini but I have not updated any software. However, I added a third 2tb external Samsung T7, also connected via USB-C. My BenQ QHD monitor has always been connected via USB-C but I moved it to the HDMI port now, to leave a free port for a backup disk when needed.

It seems like that might be what has speeded everything up.
 
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