External hard drives stall macOS updates?

1

For the last few months or even a year my macOS updates have stalled on the Apple screen with just a bit of progress bar. Somehow I discovered that if I first ejected my external hard drives (an SSD for my Photoslibrary, a hard drive for Time Machine backups, and another for Carbon Copy Clone backups) everything goes smoothly.

This was happening with my 2016 15” MacBook Pro and I was chalking it up to old age, but now it just happened with my new M1 iMac. Anyone else had this experience? Any insights or solutions?

1 Like
2

I would hope a TM drive isn’t the problem, and an external drive for photos, etc. is quite common. I’ve run that way for years.

Have you tried ejecting only one drive each attempt to update, to possibly narrow down the cause of the problem? I’d start with your CCC drive.

3

Thanks, I’ll try that next time. Still hoping to hear from someone who has experienced the same thing … I can’t be the only one, surely!

1 Like