Finder crashes when copying from one external HD to another and when moving folders around and renaming them
I've come to the end of my gigantic digital archive reorganization...and am getting to the end of my patience. I've restarted the computer at least ten times in the past three hours.
I usually have three external hard drives, as my data is too voluminous to fit my internal 500gb SSD. The external drives I am using currently are elaborated below.
Over the past week, I have completely reorganized my local digital archives. Of course, this involves massive work for the Finder: moving files and folders around, renaming folders and files, deleting many files and folders, and emptying the Trash often. Of course, this involves a lot of writing to these external hard drives as well as to the internal SSD.
My workflow normally involves whatever I am working on being stored in the internal SSD. In the course of a project, I save early and save often, doing so obsessively - never using an auto-save feature except in video games.
I also write from the internal SSD to both external drives very often. I've had hard drive crashes before, and backing up my data has saved me twice over the years. I always back up my data manually, never even trusting Time Machine or any other automatic file-saving tech.
Copying from the internal SSD to the external drives has never been an issue, and it isn't now. Doing intricate work in a folder in terms of making new nested folders and really moving stuff around bogs down Finder after a while. Moving files larger than 500mb from one external drive to another brings Finder to its knees, too.
Eventually, as I go about copying, deleting, and emptying the Trash, I get the beach ball, and pressing the 'X' button on a stuck copying operation does not work. I always have to restart the computer.
Restarting the computer does not always repopulate the external drives on Finder. The one below named 'Principal' almost always repopulates without issue, but any other drives I have plugged in (never more than three) either don't repopulate in Finder or take a long time to do so.
And even when everything repopulates, pressing a folder-arrow to bring up nested items sometimes does not work. When that happens, I have to restart, and it can take as much as a half-hour or more to recover from a Finder crash.
I cannot remember having these issues before on my old iMac or on this maching - certainly not to this extent to where I am doubting for the first time my machine's ability to function. If I can't trust Finder, what on an Apple can I trust? Finder should be the most-stable application in MacOS, and at the moment, I can bring up FireFox easier than I can bring up Finder.
Fortunately, I have not lost data due to any of this, and it may the file systems of my external drives are not as Apple-friendly as I thought. Additionally, I've no doubt the lack of a dedicated graphics card is contributing to my present woes.
I am clueless as to what to do next to bring stability in Finder back to my Mac. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Mojave 10.14.6
Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 16 GB
Boot ROM Version: 244.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.24f32
Volume name : Principal - MyBook for Mac
Volume type : Physical Volume
BSD device node : disk3s3
Mount point : /Volumes/Principal - MyBook for Mac
File system : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection : USB
Device tree path : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC1@14
Writable : Yes
Is case-sensitive : No
File system UUID : 1FE0FA16-3A8D-3921-8D52-F7597FF3CF28
Volume capacity : 2,000,231,030,784
Available space (Purgeable + Free) : 1,651,068,387,328
Purgeable space : 0
Free space : 1,651,068,387,328
Used space : 349,162,643,456
File count : 320,253
Owners enabled : No
Is encrypted : No
System Integrity Protection supported : No
Can be verified : Yes
Can be repaired : Yes
Bootable : No
Journaled : Yes
Disk number : 3
Partition number : 3
Media name :
Media type : Generic
Ejectable : Yes
Solid state : No
SMART status : Not Supported
Parent disks : disk3
Volume name : Dec 2019
Volume type : Unknown
BSD device node : disk2s2
Mount point : /Volumes/Dec 2019
File system : ExFAT
Connection : USB
Device tree path : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC1@14
Writable : Yes
Is case-sensitive : No
File system UUID : B80C5904-C31C-3DE6-84A0-F90E458E9D2D
Volume capacity : 2,000,188,080,128
Available space (Purgeable + Free) : 1,586,440,437,760
Purgeable space : 0
Free space : 1,586,440,437,760
Used space : 413,747,642,368
Owners enabled : No
Is encrypted : No
System Integrity Protection supported : No
Can be verified : Yes
Can be repaired : Yes
Bootable : No
Journaled : No
Disk number : 2
Partition number : 2
Media name :
Media type : Generic
Ejectable : Yes
Solid state : No
SMART status : Not Supported
Parent disks : disk2
