Finder is unusable after accessing a large quantity of music files on an external hard disc

[polyestergonzo]

A peculiar thing is happening, when I plug my backup of music files into either my Mac Mini or my Macbook pro.
As soon as I drill down to the folder with the music file folders and open it, after a few minutes the various album folders are revealed
but the finder is frozen and I'm unable to do anything finder related, no matter how long I wait.
All I can do then is force restart the mac.
The same thing happens when I access the original copy of the files on my server via SMB.
Again this happens on either Mac.
I could manage to add files to the hard drive by dropping a new file on the 'music' folder containing the album and artist folders.
But as soon as clicked on the 'music' folder to reveal the nested folders then the finder froze.
I'd noticed this behaviour getting worse over the past few weeks but previously this wasn't an issue.
It's like both external drives containing the same files have reached their headroom of number of files, or perhaps a corrupt file or malware is causing this issue.

 

[IWT]

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums.

Whilst wiser minds than mine figure out a solution, may I just clarify one point?

When Finder freezes - can you still use the Mouse (on the Mini) or the Keypad on the MacBook?

Because if you can still use the Mouse, Click on the Apple icon  top left menu bar. From that choose Force Quit and one of the options is "Finder". Clicking on that that quits Finder and then you can relaunch it.

Of course, if Mouse and Keyboards are also frozen, then a force restart of the computer is necessary, as you said.

Ian

 

[ferrarr]

Are both drives always connected to both Macs?

How old are the drives?

How much free space is available on both drives?

How are the drives formatted?

What macOS are both Macs using?

 

[polyestergonzo]

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums.

Whilst wiser minds than mine figure out a solution, may I just clarify one point?

When Finder freezes - can you still use the Mouse (on the Mini) or the Keypad on the MacBook?

Because if you can still use the Mouse, Click on the Apple icon  top left menu bar. From that choose Force Quit and one of the options is "Finder". Clicking on that that quits Finder and then you can relaunch it.

Of course, if Mouse and Keyboards are also frozen, then a force restart of the computer is necessary, as you said.

Ian

Thanks, yes I think the mouse and keypad was still working

 

[polyestergonzo]

Are both drives always connected to both Macs?

How old are the drives?

How much free space is available on both drives?

How are the drives formatted?

What macOS are both Macs using?

Hi, one drive is connected to my Nucleus+ Roon music server that I access through SMB and the other one is the backup of that drive that Is normally plugged into the Mini but tonight I plugged it into the Macbook and found the same issue on both machines. The drive is brand new, 10TB Seagate with over 5tb free fomatted ExFat.

 

[MacInWin]

A peculiar thing is happening, when I plug my backup of music files into either my Mac Mini or my Macbook pro.

How did you make this backup? I ask because if it is with Time Machine, Finder is not the right tool to access the files there. The way TM stores files makes Finder very inefficient and if you try to access files in a TM backup that way there is an excellent chance you can destroy the entire backup.

 

[polyestergonzo]

How did you make this backup? I ask because if it is with Time Machine, Finder is not the right tool to access the files there. The way TM stores files makes Finder very inefficient and if you try to access files in a TM backup that way there is an excellent chance you can destroy the entire backup.

Hi Jake, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make the backup, last night I tried to view the files again with the drive connected to the macbook. The folder structure is Seagate10TB/Roon/Storage/muzak When I open the muzak folder I see the first 15 music album folders but when I use the mouse to move the window down to view the other folders the finder freezes. I left it like that last night and this morning I was still unable to move the folders up but at least I could restart the finder via the Apple menu. I've just gone through the exercise again and am unable to even access the apple menu. My next thought was to connect one of the drives to a friend's laptop, I have to wait though as here in Melbourne we are currently in lockdown and not allowed to leave the house except for essential services.

 

[Horsa]

This may or may not be relevant, but it may be worth investigating.

When using Finder to view/access the contents of a drive or folder that contains a large number of sizeable files, the process can be slowed down if you've got the "Calculate all sizes" checkbox ticked in "View options" (it usually is by default). It strikes me that if Finder is occupied interrogating 5TB of data for thousands of individual file sizes, it could be kept terribly busy for a long time - which might result in the phenomenon you're seeing. Try this...

Connect the Seagate drive to one of your mac machines and locate the Muzak folder with Finder, but DON'T OPEN IT YET. Instead, right-click it and from the context menu that appears, choose "Show view options". In the menu which appears next, if "Calculate all sizes" is checked, un-check it.
Close the finder window and re-open it. Now go to the Muzak folder and open it as usual. Any better?

 

[polyestergonzo]

Hi Horsa, thanks for the idea.
I looked at the settings and found that Calculate all sizes was already unchecked.
Back to the drawing board

 

[Horsa]

Dang. The only other thing I can suggest is to query the drive with Disk Utility, do a First aid/Permissions repair thing on it, just in case it's got a bit out of kilter.

Rather depressingly, this old thread from 2012 describes similar behaviour when accessing the contents of an external drive. I don't know whether things have changed since, but the opinion of Seagate drives back then was pretty damning:

USB 3.0 External HDs Freezing when Copying Files, Then Finder Freezes.

Hello MacForums, New member here, very happy to join the community, really hoping I can get my issue resolved with your help! So here's my specs, first off: MBP (Late 2011) 2.5 Ghz i7 16GB RAM OSX 10.7.3 750 GB HDD (~60% full) External: 1 x WD 2TB USB3 HDD - MOSX Ext (Journaled) - Apple...

www.mac-forums.com

 

[polyestergonzo]

Yep, thanks I tried that and Disk Utility reported no issues. Weird thing is that my other drive a 12 TB Novus Oyen connected to my Nucleus / Roon NAS is having the same issues when I access it via smb. But accessing it through the Roon software is fine, it's only via the finder from either mac either plugged in directly or via SMB.
Both drives have exhibited this problem just recently. I'm planning to connect them to my son's laptop when I can to see if he can replicate the issue.

 

[Horsa]

I've never thought much of SMB - always found it a bit flaky, so if this was only happening on SMB, I wouldn't exactly be surprised ...but as it's happening over a direct USB connection as well, I'm stumped!

 

[ferrarr]

Can you add the drives to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy? Maybe Spotlight is trying to index the drive?

 

[polyestergonzo]

Can you add the drives to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy? Maybe Spotlight is trying to index the drive?

yes the drive is listed

 

[polyestergonzo]

After plugging in the drive to a Windows laptop and another Mac and experiencing no Finder issues. I was encouraged to wipe the drive on my MacBook and reinstall Big Sur. After plugging in the drive I find I still have the same issue. How can this be possible!!

 

[polyestergonzo]

Are both drives always connected to both Macs?

How old are the drives? Both less than one year old

How much free space is available on both drives? over 5TB on one and 7 on the other

How are the drives formatted? ex-fat

What macOS are both Macs using? 11.5.2

I don't have the issue plugging in one of the drives into my son's new Macbook pro running a beta of OS 12 or an old Windows laptop.
Perhaps it's Big Sur related?

 

[MacInWin]

Maybe, but it's not a systemic problem because I have Big Sur and have never seen the issue on any of my large drives or my network drives.

 

[Horsa]

After plugging in the drive to a Windows laptop and another Mac and experiencing no Finder issues. I was encouraged to wipe the drive on my MacBook and reinstall Big Sur. After plugging in the drive I find I still have the same issue. How can this be possible!!

I hate to say this, but if installing a different Mac OS doesn't cure the problem, you might have to face the possibility that there's some kind of hardware issue with your Macbook, though I'm blowed if I can guess what.

I think I've just succeeded in stating the bleedin' obvious. Gosh, I'm on fire today.

 

[Rod]

Just to come at this from a completely different angle, the primary differences in Big Sur and Catalina to a lesser extent are security related. Ever more stringent control of access to the system resources requires many apps to be manually approved in System Preferences > Privacy & Security > Privacy. If any of your files require an app to access them you may need to grant Access under these settings.
I'm also a little concerned about these drives being formatted as ExFAT.