Opinion: External drives taking too long to load?

Apple has an app called Disk Utility preinstalled on all Macs. Open Disk Utility and you can select the external drive from a list of connected volumes and there is a Disk First Aid option to run a manual check on the disk to identify any issues worth noting. — Jim Rossman/TNS

This week a reader writes: I have a Mac desktop with two 1 terabyte external SSDs, one used for Time Machine backups and one for my daily files.

As I understand it, these drives have to be “ejected” before disconnecting them. I’ve found that after power outages (not often) I have to disconnect and reconnect the cables before the drives will power back up. Now, the “files” drive is taking 3-5 minutes to power back up (which scares me). Is this cause for concern?