Summary :

1. If Office seems to be taking a very long time to install, this may be caused by problems with your internet connection, firewall, or anti-virus software. For possible solutions, see Office is taking long to install. Office can also take long to install because of a slow internet connection (such as a dial-up connection).
2. Check that your Mac is compatible. First, make sure your Mac can run Catalina. Apple provides a.
3. Dec 18, 2018.
4. Sep 13, 2017.
5. Jun 16, 2020.

Is your external hard drive taking forever to load? Fail to access the disk data? Take it easy now! This post shows you how to recover data from the unresponsive hard drive with MiniTool software and fix this loading problem on Windows and Mac.

Normally Dropbox doesn't use all of your bandwidth. However, you can change that by manually setting the upload/download speed: 1) Right click the Dropbox icon in the system tray at the bottom right of your screen, by the clock on Windows or menu bar at the top of your screen on Mac or menu bar at the top of your screen on Linux.

External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load

'When I plugged in my HDD cable into the USB port, I open This PC(My Computer), and right-click to refresh it, I get to see my physical drive, but it doesn't have any information like the disk space available and the green ribbon will be loading and it just loads forever. When I go to Disk Management, it will load forever as well, as though it is trying to access the HDD but it is not able to.'Tomshardware

This example tells you a case about external hard drive taking forever to load. Actually, this issue is quite common and may be caused by some reasons including logical errors, bad sectors, insufficient power, etc.

Usually, the hard drive can be successfully connected to a computer and shown in Windows Explorer but loads forever and finally unresponsive. Moreover, all data stored on the external hard drive becomes inaccessible.

Actually, the external hard drive slow and unresponsive issue happens not only in Windows but also in Mac. If you also have such a problem, what should you do? Here in this article, we're going to walk you through how to recover data from this disk as well as solutions to the problem in Windows and Mac.

A relatively comprehensive analysis & fix plan about external hard drive not working issue are given here to help people get out of trouble.

Recover Data from Slow and Unresponsive External Hard Drive

External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load in Windows

When external hard drive infinite loading problem happens in Windows 10/8/7, if you have saved many important files on this disk, the first thing you should do is to restore data from the target disk.

Well then, is there any tool helpful for Windows data recovery? Of course, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is worthy of being recommended.

It is a piece of professional, safe data recovery software, enabling you to recover data from different situations including deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus infection, system crash, etc.

Besides, this program allows retrieving lost/deleted videos, audios, pictures, documents, emails, documents, compressed files and so on from a hard drive, USB drive, SD card, digital camera, memory stick and other storage devices. What's more, the inaccessible files on your device can be restored.

If your external hard drive takes forever to load, don't hesitate to get MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition to check if the deleted data, as well as inaccessible files on the target disk, can be found.

Step 1: Choose a Partition to Scan

1. Start MiniTool Power Data Recovery in Windows 10/8/7.
2. You will see four features. Which one is suitable for you to recover data from external hard drive taking forever to load in Windows 10/8/7? This PC is suitable.
3. Actually, this feature is selected by default. Just choose the partition containing important files on your external hard drive and click the Scan button for a scan.

Before starting a scan, you can use the Settings option to make some advanced settings for the scan. In the following small window, MiniTool Power Data Recovery allows you to scan partitions with certain file systems as well as some file types.

For example, if you only want to recover word documents, pictures or audios & videos, just unfold the corresponding folder to choose certain types.

Step 2: Scan Your Partition

1. Now, this software is scanning the selected partition.
2. During the scan process, if MiniTool Power Data Recovery finds files on the external hard drive that takes forever to load in Windows 10/8/7, they will be listed on the left side.

Step 3: Search for Files

1. Now, this tool enters the scan result interface where all found data including lost/deleted and existing files are displayed in the path section.
2. Here, you can search for desired files via the Path section.

Step 4: Register the Software

1. Actually, MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition only helps you to scan files, not recover. To get files back from the external hard drive that keeps loading, upgrade it to a full edition via MiniTool Store.
2. Register it in the scan result to avoid a scan again.

Step 5: Specify a Storage Path

1. Check the files you want to retrieve and click Save.
2. In the pop-up small window, select a storage path.
3. Please note that the original place is not recommended and you had better choose another drive to save the recovered files so as to avoid overwriting data.

In addition, you can use the Hard Disk Drive feature to scan the slow and unresponsive external hard drive and recover deleted and existing files on it.

Just launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery and then choose this feature. Then, you will see all detected hard disks. And you need to choose the external hard drive to scan. After finishing the scan, select the files you want to recover and then save them to a safe location.

Recover Data in Case of External Hard Disk Taking Too Long to Respond Mac

If you are a Mac user and find external hard drive takes long time to load Mac, the first thing you should do is to get data back from your Mac. Here Stellar Data Recovery is your good option.

It can recover data from an internal/external hard drive, memory sticks, USB drive, pen drive, memory card, etc on all Mac devices. Besides, it can be used to repair corrupted or distorted videos and photos. What's more, this software is compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 and above. And it supports APFS, HFS+, FAT, and NTFS file systems.

Stellar Data Recovery offers you a trial edition of each edition, including Professional, Premium, and Technician. Here, you can click the link to get Stellar Data Recovery Premium Trial to have a try.

Step 1: Install Stellar Data Recovery on your Mac and launch it to its main interface. Then, click Next to continue after customizing your scan.

Step 2: Select the drive you want to scan and click Scan.

Step 3: Then, this software is looking for your recoverable files. Wait a few minutes until the scan completes.

Step 4: After the scan finishes, go to find files that you want to recover, check them, and click Recover to recover them to a secure location.

Solved - External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load

After finishing data recovery from the external hard drive taking forever to load, now it is time to fix this issue. Here, we will respectively walk you through the solutions to this problem in Windows and Mac.

Fix External Hard Drive Takes Long Time to Load in Windows

① Boot Your Computer into Safe Mode

Sometimes you can fix some disk problems after a startup. To boot into safe mode, different operating systems have different ways. Here this post shows you details: How to Start Windows 10 in Safe Mode (While Booting) [6 Ways].

② Use Different Cable

You can remove the slow and unresponsive external hard drive from the target computer. And plug it into another computer using a different cable or via the SATA interface. If the hard disk taking too long to respond issue still occurs, try the next solution.

③ Reinstall Drive Letter

If the drive driver is corrupted, the issue of external hard disk slow response may happen. To make your disk faster, you can try reinstalling the driver.

1. Click Win + R, type devmgmt.msc in the pop-out window and hit Enter.
2. Device Manager is turned on. Then you can check if there is a yellow mark concerning this drive. If there is, right-click on it to choose Uninstall, reboot your PC and let Windows install the new driver.

④ Run CMD to Check and Fix External Hard Drive Errors

Sometimes your external hard drive takes forever to load due to the disk errors. To fix this issue, please open Command Prompt and then type chkdsk /f g: (g is the drive letter of your external hard drive). Or check disk errors in Windows Explorer.

⑤ Format the External Hard Drive as New

Formatting is a good way to fix many disk problems. When external hard drive infinite loading issue occurs, you can try to format it. Go to Disk Management, right-click on the target drive and choose Format. And then specify its file system, cluster size, and volume label.

Why Is My Mac Taking So Long To Download

⑥ Replace the Incapable Disk

If all those ways are useless, perhaps this external hard drive gets damaged physically. You can only replace this damaged disk with a new one.

Solved External Hard Drive Takes Long Time to Load Mac

If your external hard drive keeps loading for a long time in Mac, you can also restart this Mac, remove & plug the target disk to another Mac and format this external hard drive.

In addition, you can use Disk Utility to repair disk. In Mac, there is a tool called Disk Utility, enabling you to repair some disk issues.

1. Just click the Go menu, select the Utility folder and open Disk Utility.
2. Select the external hard in the left pane and enter the First Aid tab to click Repair Disk.

Why Is My Mac Taking So Long To Download Things

Bottom Line

External hard drive takes forever to load in Windows and Mac? Now it is your time to recover data from this target disk and then take measures to fix this issue.

Should you have questions when using our software or any suggestions of this issue, please let us know by sending your idea to [email protected] or leaving a comment below.

External Hard Drive Slow and Unresponsive FAQ

1. Check the cables
2. Defrag your hard drive
3. Run a disk check
4. Reinstall the disk driver
5. Check your PC for viruses and malware
6. Format the external hard drive as new
7. Disable Windows 10 Indexing

1. Check the power
2. Try a Different USB port
3. Uninstall the disk driver
4. Turn On USB Root Hub
5. Show all hidden devices
6. Make changes in Registry
7. Check disk for bad sectors