7 Solutions to Fix “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” Issue

Lawrence

5 years ago

Summary: This article will take you through several ways to fix and repair the “external hard drive takes forever to load” issue and restore all your important data using the best data recovery software which is Bitwar Data Recovery software.

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Sometimes, when the external hard drive is connected and shows up on a Windows system, and the disk is taking too long to respond. Don’t worry! “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load‘” is a prevalent external hard drive issue for all users.

As one of the cases faced by one of the users below:

“I’ve been using a Seagate external hard drive for two years and counting. It is perfectly fine, and the hard drive is useful to store any data I need, but after these recent months, the external hard drive becomes slow and unresponsive on my system. The hard drive takes forever to mount. What can I do about it to fix my external hard drive issue? “

Furthermore, sometimes, double-clicking or right-clicking on that drive will cause explorer not to respond or even crash. Therefore, if you are one of the users who encounter this issue, quickly refer to the article below, and we will show you all the help and fixes that you need to solve the problem as soon as possible!

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Possible Reasons “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” Issue Occurs

This issue doesn’t only appear in Windows but also in the Mac operating system, below are some reasons that can cause the problem to happen:

Insufficient power.
Presence of bad sectors.
Logical errors.
External hard drive corrupted.

To prevent the risk of erasing the data on your hard drive, we suggest that you can choose one of the easiest solutions to get the problem fixed, however, if you don’t know which one is the best, try to follow the solutions one by one.

Solutions to Solve “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” Issue

Solution 1. Check Physical Condition

The first thing first is to check the hard disk, whether it is broke or not, when this issue happens. Please check the LED light, the sound of the hard drive, and more. Suppose that it is physically broke, quickly go and restore all your data using Bitwar Data Recovery Software.

Solution 2. Change Cable

Try to remove the external hard drive from your system and connect to another system but using a different cable or SATA interface for the hard drive. Suppose that the hard drive still takes a long time to respond or is loading slowing, then you can continue with the other solutions below.

Solution 3. Reinstall Drive

Sometimes, the driver may have been corrupted, so it has to be uninstalled to reinstall the driver again. Follow the steps below:

Step 1. Click Win + R and type in devmgmt.msc in the pop-out window and hit Enter.

Step 2. When the Device Manager appears, please check if there is a yellow mark concerning this drive. If you saw the yellow mark, right-click and click Uninstall.

Step 3. Reboot PC and install the New Driver again.

Solution 4. Update Disk Drivers

If reinstalling the disk driver is not solving the “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” issue, you can try to update the disk driver.

Step 1: Open the run box again by pressing Win+R and type devmgmt.msc in the Run box to launch the Device Manager.

Step 2: Now, expand Disk Drives to find your external hard drive and right-click on it to select Update Driver.

Step 3: After this, right-click on Update Driver and select automatically search for driver software online.

Step 4: If this updating does not solve the problem, then select the Uninstall device option next time.

It would be frustrating if none of them worked. Even worse, you might find the problem is still existed. Assuming that there’s the vital data on the drive, we then recommend you to use Bitwar Data recovery to retrieve the data before processing other solutions that will cause the data to lose.

Solution 5. Recover Data From External Hard Drives

The best and smart way to retrieve your data when the “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” issue occurs is by using Bitwar Data Recovery Software. This software is highly reliable, user-friendly, and safe. Besides, it can recover any data from any internal or external storage device on Windows 7/8/10 and Mac system.

Follow the steps below to Restore Data using Data Recovery Tool:

Step 1: Download Bitwar Data Recovery software according to your system and install it on your computer.

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Step 2: After installing the recovery software, Connect the hard drive to the computer, and Launch the recovery tool.

Step 3: Now, select the External Hard Drive by clicking on it and press on the Next button to continue.

Step 4: Choose the File Type you want to recover and click on Next.

Step 5: Then, Preview the files or data and click on Recover to start recovery.

Important Note: Once recovery is finished successfully, save the recovered data somewhere safe, DO NOT save it back to the same affected drive/disk to Prevent Permanent DATA LOSS!

Sometimes the data on the troubled hard drive may not be so important to you, then you can free up some disk space to see whether or not the error persists.

Solution 6. Free Up Disk Space

Check your disk space in your external hard drive and make sure there is always space available because full storage will slow down the transfer speed of the drive with long hang times. Always remember to back up all the data, or move the large file to other places.

Now that the methods above have been proven fruitless, it’s time to take some hard and extreme steps. If you don’t know how to do, ask your technical friends to do you a favor.

Solution 7. Format the External Hard Drive to Speed Up

Formatting will wipe off all your data; thus, before going for it, make sure that you have created a back-up of your data.

Step 1: Press Windows+R to launch the Run box and type diskmgmt.msc, press Enter to execute.

Step 2: A disk management window will open, right-click on the Partition/disk you want to format, and select Format.

Step 3: After this, a pop-up window will appear where you can cluster size and set file system then, press OK to save changes.

Solution 8. Time to Buy a New Hard Drive!

When the above-stated solutions fail to eliminate the “External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” issue, we suggest buying a new hard drive after you have successfully restored all your precious data using Bitwar Data Recovery software.

Try It Now!

“External Hard Drive Takes Forever to Load” problem can be frustrating and waste a lot of time. It is a common problem that mainly occurs due to bad sectors, corrupted hard drive, and insufficient power, etc. Follow the guided solutions above to fix the issue as soon as possible.

We also suggest using a powerful data recovery tool like Bitwar Data Recovery software due to its powerful functionality and 100% result delivery in case any data loss during the process to prevent permanent data loss. Moreover, the software is efficient and extremely user-centric; it assures quick data recovery from any storage devices.