Update to Ventura changed format of an external HD

[Darryl Ramm]

Joe

I just want you to be super careful, and that would start with doing what I suggested and share the mount command output. It is just *impossible* that this drive changed file systems so lets try to see if we can sort out what is going on before you do brain surgery on your computer.

Especially say it's easy to have SD cards or USB thumb drives or some other device attached, that will show up as NFTS drive, heck you might even have malware screwing with your machine via USB. So disconnect everything you can, reboot, attach the drive and copy and paste what mount is showing.

What *exact* internal drives do you have on your Mac? And how much free space does it have?

Use the Mac's systems System Report tool to see what devices are listed in the NVMeExpress tree, and for that (should be only one) paste the output here. If you have an Apple or third party PCIe SSD internally and enough free space then I would be running sessions off that drive, and I'd be running samples off it as well. And if they did not fit on the current PCIe/NVMe SSD I'd maybe buy a larger PCIe/NVMe SSD upgrade from somebody like OWC.

900GB is stuff you need to back up? Is that old archived sessions? Samples for VIs you use? But how much stuff do you need to work on current sessions? For ongoing use if you have space on the internal drive to accommodate working sessions and samples then I'd go that route. A good PCIe SSD drive will give you more performance that an external drive with potentially less hassle... *but* I would not rush to do anything until you've tried to get a handle on what is going on. (But ordering more external SSD or HHD for backup is always a good idea).