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External drive shows three times in Disk Utility and on Desktop

My external drive needed to be formatted today. I did so and now it shows up three times in both Disk Utility and on my Desktop. If I unmount one it doesn't work. I've tried leaving the drive connected and restarting, disconnecting the drive and restarting, erasing/formatting the drive several times. I would just like it to be listed once.


iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Mar 4, 2021 2:09 PM

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Posted on Mar 4, 2021 3:37 PM

Boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.


NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files


2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 4, 2021 3:37 PM in response to hlance

Boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.


NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files


External drive shows three times in Disk Utility and on Desktop

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