External Hard Drive (Mac) Stuck Verifying

[john.gulledge]

I'm trying to save space on my Mac mini m1 by downloading the game to an external drive. I've change the download folder, and everything appears to work just fine, but when I try to run the game after downloading, my computer attempts to "verify." It gets stuck on this process. When I download the game directly to my mini, it runs without issue. I've tried to change some permissions (full access, for example) but I'm not totally sure what files need to be copied and moved to make the verification run without issue. Any ideas how to get around this?

[g.millam]

Have you found a resolution to this issue? I am in your boat… I have Baldur’s Gate 3 installed on my M2 Pro Mac Mini and it’s taking up a massive amount of disk space on my internal SSD. I have a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 drive with a fast NVMe that would run it fine. Please reply if you have a solution. I would greatly appreciate it.

[Nato]

I too have run into this issue on my M1 MacBook Air. Oddly enough I had a 256GB SK Hynix NVMe SSD that I ran the game on just fine. Yesterday I upgraded to a 2TB WD SN850X and now I'm experiencing this same issue. I went to Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access > Allowed Steam, but still no resolve. Both Steam and BG3 are installed on my external drive just like I had it on my old SK Hynix drive. What gives?

[Nato]

I stumbled across my own solution - maybe it would work for you? I erased and reformatted my external drive from exFAT to APFS. I also moved my Steam application from that external drive back to my main internal drive. I then reinstalled BG3 and found the verification finally worked and launched the game. However, I suspect the reformatting and/or clean-slate reinstall was what solved the issue.