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External SSD very slow to load on Monterey

B

Black Tiger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
512
698
Hi all,

Ever since updating from Big Sur to Monterey (about 3 weeks ago), my external SSD takes FOREVER to load its contents. The drive icon and such shows up immediately when I plug it in. It also is immediately visible with no apparent issues in Disk Utility. But when I open the drive in Finder or try to access anything on the drive, it takes upwards of 10 minutes after plugging it in for anything to show up in the Finder. For reference, this is a Thunderbolt 3 SSD and was lightning quick prior to updating. Once it does finally show the files, the drive is painfully slow. About 30MB/second.

Any ideas what might be going on here? I searched on other sites and some mentioned that formatting to APFS fixed this for some people, but this drive is already formatted this way.

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
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30 MB/s makes me wonder if it's connecting via USB 2.0 for some reason. That's definitely much too slow for a normal SSD connecting over USB 3.0.
 
ArkSingularity said:
30 MB/s makes me wonder if it's connecting via USB 2.0 for some reason. That's definitely much too slow for a normal SSD connecting over USB 3.0.
Click to expand...
I haven't changed the cable, so I am wondering why it would do this. Also, it's not even USB 3, it's Thunderbolt 3, which is way faster than USB 3. Prior to updating to Monterey it would run at about 900MB/second. The only change is the OS. I'm completely baffled!
 
What results to you get with Blackmagic Speed test?

Also, when you go to About This Mac -> System Report -> Hardware -> USB, what do you see?
 
It would be nice to include the model and year of the Mac you're using.

Have you tried checking the SMART status of your SSD? DriveDx has a free trial you can download to check it.
 
Have the same problem. Spend a lot of time testing fat32, exfat, different cables and 2,5ssd cases. Both ssd i have. No Luck. Sometimes ssd disconnecting and speed become about 30mbps. after restart mac the same. But it always surprise. Sometimes after reconnecting cable it become 400mbps again.
Macboock pro 14. 2021. Ssd 2.5 WD Blue and red 4000gb. cases Baseus and agestar.
 
Hi- posting here to follow along and see if there's any resolution cause I'm having the same problem. I have a new MBP M1 Max 16" and my Sandisk Extreme SSD 2tb v1 is very slow- about 30 MB/s - no matter which cable combo I try. On my old trashcan Mac Pro and 2013 MBP the drive is plenty fast- both running Big Sur. I understand this is a Monterey issue that hasn't really been resolved but I am trying to see if there is a workaround/fix that will make this old drive usable on the new computer. Checking in System Profiler shows 5gb/s connection speed on all 3 systems. Drive is formatted APFS.

I have read that using a thunderbolt 3 hub will solve this but is that the only solution? I also have a Sandisk Extreme 2tb (v2) also formatted APFS which works fine- about 900MB/s on the new MBP via the supplied usb-c to usb-c cable.
 
tmuzzy said:
Hi- posting here to follow along and see if there's any resolution cause I'm having the same problem. I have a new MBP M1 Max 16" and my Sandisk Extreme SSD 2tb v1 is very slow- about 30 MB/s - no matter which cable combo I try. On my old trashcan Mac Pro and 2013 MBP the drive is plenty fast- both running Big Sur. I understand this is a Monterey issue that hasn't really been resolved but I am trying to see if there is a workaround/fix that will make this old drive usable on the new computer. Checking in System Profiler shows 5gb/s connection speed on all 3 systems. Drive is formatted APFS.

I have read that using a thunderbolt 3 hub will solve this but is that the only solution? I also have a Sandisk Extreme 2tb (v2) also formatted APFS which works fine- about 900MB/s on the new MBP via the supplied usb-c to usb-c cable.
Click to expand...
Here's an odd data point to share... after letting the same drive sit plugged in for about 45 min it is now about 400MB/s R/W. What can possibly change as it sits for that long?
 
tmuzzy said:
Here's an odd data point to share... after letting the same drive sit plugged in for about 45 min it is now about 400MB/s R/W. What can possibly change as it sits for that long?
Click to expand...
Do you have TRIM enabled for this SSD? If it's doing garbage collection because it needs to find some empty pages to write to then it will be pretty slow while processing that. If you're using this with an external USB enclosure I'm not sure you can enable TRIM for it. That's one of the reasons I always use Thunderbolt external enclosures (OWC Thunderbays or Envoy).
 
Having exactly the same issue. Samsung T5. Extremely slow when first connected, with the blue activity light constantly flashing. Any app trying to access the SSD hangs with the wait cursor because it's so slow. Then after approx. half an hour of being plugged in, the drive is back to normal speed.

Drive worked fine when I was on Big Sur a week ago. Problem started as soon as I updated to Monterey (12.6).

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019).
 
Update in case it's useful for anyone: I am using the original short USBC (Thunderbolt 3?) cable that came with the Samsung T5 (that worked fine for a year with Big Sur). This morning I tried swapping that cable for the long white USB-C charger cable that came with my MBP and it mounted instantly with no issues (although transfer speeds were slower since that cable uses USB2 I believe).

So I guess either it's a dodgy/incompatible cable that for some reason worked fine with Big Sur, or it's an issue specifically with Thunderbolt 3 cables and Monterey?
 
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