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Having issues with Big Sur 11.3.1

Since upgrading to Big Sur I've been having lots of problems, mainly with my mac restarting or shutting down because of a problem. Is anyone else having these glitches? I've spent all weekend in my local iStore but they thought it was a problem with the external hard drives, however after looking online I'm thinking is it Big Sur? I'm using a MacBook Pro I purchased in march (2019 version) brand new from Apple. These are the problems I'm experiencing:


  • Couldn't copy files from one hard drive to another, kept getting error message 36, even though it had worked perfectly previously, the only way I could get it to work was booting up in safe mode
  • Time machine backed up once onto the hard drive, second time didn't work so re-started and then it worked. Just had another failure (following day)
  • Finder constantly doesn't respond so I force quit and then I can never get it open, so I try to restart and it gets stuck for 15 minutes my background and spinning wheel - when it eventually powers off the fan goes crazy and I get the black screen telling me my computer restarted because of a problem.
  • My hard drives seem to eject themselves - I can see them either in disk utility or in finder but they are greyed out and show that there's nothing on them and don't give me the option to mount or eject? They either don't show up in the finder after I've been using them for a while or they do but like I say are greyed out?


I think that's about everything, I took the laptop into the iMac store and they ran diagnostics which said there was no problems so I'm just a bit confused what's happening. They've told me the next step would be to wipe the computer and start a-fresh like when I first got it?


Has anyone downgraded from Big Sur, wondering if that could sort a lot of my issues! Thanks :)


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on May 16, 2021 11:54 PM

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Posted on May 18, 2021 2:48 AM

You should uninstall the WD software.

Your mac does not need any drive manufacturer software to use those drives.

It looks to me like these may be causing issues in 11.3.


Try uninstalling it, following their instructions, then connect the drives and see how things go.

It may be useful to post a new report after doing this, to get information about the drives, and to make sure that all the remnants of that software are gone.

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May 18, 2021 2:48 AM in response to xchloejoyce

You should uninstall the WD software.

Your mac does not need any drive manufacturer software to use those drives.

It looks to me like these may be causing issues in 11.3.


Try uninstalling it, following their instructions, then connect the drives and see how things go.

It may be useful to post a new report after doing this, to get information about the drives, and to make sure that all the remnants of that software are gone.

May 18, 2021 5:38 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

So I deleted the WD apps like you said and so far I've had 3 different portable hard-drives plugged in and not a single glitch!!!! I think you found the problem for me, I will keep monitoring and I've done a new EtreCheck report attached :)

Fingers crossed it was just the app interfering - so strange as obviously western digital asked me to install that application to work alongside one of the hard drives (the newest one apple gave me is a g-drive) do you think that application just isn't compatible with the new Mac OS Big Sur?

Thank you so so much I hope it was just that app 🤞🏻

May 17, 2021 10:14 AM in response to xchloejoyce

Did you subsequently install or change anything else? Normally Big Sur should not be the problem. It is often another file or something which is incompatible in some way with Big Sur. Or, it could be that when you downloaded Big Sur, it was done via Wi-Fi and the downloaded file may have gotten corrupted. It happens. These are very large files and Wi-Fi is much slower and can be subject to intermittent interruptions. You may want to reinstall the OS using a direct wired Ethernet connection. That may resolve the problems. Good luck.

May 17, 2021 10:19 AM in response to Ronasara

initially I installed over wifi but then when I was having problems was advised to reinstall and could tell something was going wrong so I went to an Apple store and they did it for me. What’s weird is it was totally fine but started glitching on Thursday? And been problematic since. I can see other people are having problems with big sur and external hard drives too. I just don’t understand my files are always the same illustrator etc! Thanks

May 17, 2021 10:46 AM in response to Ronasara

So the Apple store actually gave me a new hard drive to test out and thought that potentially it was the adapters that I were causing issues and gave me one that plugs directly into the Mac through USB C (my others are USB 3) and it’s having the same problems, my files not showing up but the storage is showing that it’s in use? Today I just shut down discounted the hard drive and worked without and it’s been fine but I really need the hard drives as my back up of work so now I’m a bit stuck with what to do. What do you think I should try next? I’ve tried 5 different hard drives and they all perform the same which makes me think there’s no way all 5 can be faulty? Thanks so much for your responses so far btw :)

May 18, 2021 11:45 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I just want to say again thank you so so much! I can't believe it was that app causing all the issues - and now after googling I can see loads of people have been having the same issue I just totally didn't think that tiny app could be doing it.


(Annoying as well that I contacted WD thinking I had a faulty hard drive and they didn't once ask if I was running OS Big Sur even though it seems they have been highlighted the issue and they actually asked me to download another WD app to run diagnostics on the drive and then decided the drive was faulty & that I should return?! Mad.)


Very grateful for your time and answer - my computer is performing perfectly, and I've been copying files between hard-drives with no error messages! THANK YOU!!! 🌞😁

Having issues with Big Sur 11.3.1

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