Extremely Slow Formatting Time - Toshiba Canvio Basics 4TB (APFS) on Mac Mini M2

This information is over 10 years old, dating back to when the first SMR drives were released. As a professional in data recovery, I could tell you a lot about how these UNMAP/TRIM commands are implemented in SMR drives, which make it almost impossible to recover deleted data from SMR HDDs. But instead, I’ll just give you a link to a good article that even a non-professional can understand: https://htwingnut.com/2023/04/30/smr-101/

For those who don’t want to read the article, here's a quick summary—avoid SMR drives.

Your disk is an SMR type, and this could be the main issue. Disks with this type of recording onto the platters are a budget solution featuring shingled magnetic recording, which requires the use of the TRIM command to optimize deleted data (formatting also counts as "deleting" data). Try running the following command in the terminal to enable TRIM/UNMAP:

sudo trimforce enable

If this doesn't help, I recommend switching to a CMR or SSD drive.

Yes, macOS doesn't support (by default) TRIM/UNMAP for external drives connected via USB (though it does support it over Thunderbolt). This has its pros and cons. A plus is that data deleted from most SMR drives by Mac users can be recovered (unless they've connected their drives to a PC).

The downside is that without TRIM commands, there isn't effective reorganization of free space on the drive, and write speeds can degrade. This kind of situation might be what's happening with APFS formatting (though I can't say for sure without physical access to the disk and the user's computer).

The command will work through any modern USB-to-SATA bridge that supports UNMAP and ATA passthrough commands, which is about 90% of chipset manufacturers. macOS also supports these commands at the IOKit level, so if an external drive supports TRIM, macOS will send this command to it (of course, this will work provided the `trimforce enable` command has been executed). I'm not sure if this will work for 100% of SMR drives, but it should work for most since it's an industry standard.

There have been reports of slow drive performance for some, but I don't think that applied to APFS formats.

Use System Information to look at the USB and see if what connection speed that drive has established.

It is a mechanical hard drive with a rotational speed of a sundial. The operating system is designed for fast SSD drives formatted as APFS. Even with a 4TB external drive, it should not take Disk Utility 3+ hours to format it via erase.

I am seeing a 4TB Canvio drive on Amazon for $198 and for an extra $20 - $30, you could have purchased a 4TB Crucial X9 SSD that is USB 3.2 Gen 2 with a connection speed of 1050MB/s. That would blow the doors off that Toshiba drive.

It sounds like that is a "shingled" drive. See https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/

If you can still return it, you should do so and get a decent SSD.

Disks with this type of recording onto the platters are a budget solution featuring shingled magnetic recording, which requires the use of the TRIM command to optimize deleted data (formatting also counts as "deleting" data). Try running the following command in the terminal to enable TRIM/UNMAP:

sudo trimforce enable

SMR drives requires TRIM? Now that's new!

But seriously, TRIM is only for SSD drives. Do not run that command.

LexxDataRecSolutions wrote:

This information is over 10 years old, dating back to when the first SMR drives were released. As a professional in data recovery, I could tell you a lot about how these UNMAP/TRIM commands are implemented in SMR drives, which make it almost impossible to recover deleted data from SMR HDDs. But instead, I’ll just give you a link to a good article that even a non-professional can understand: https://htwingnut.com/2023/04/30/smr-101/

How interesting! I didn't know that. I stand corrected, but only partially.

I'm sure that macOS doesn't support use of TRIM in this case. Even trying to force TRIM on a 3rd party SSD is risky. Apple only tests such things with Apple hardware. And most likely, these kinds of commands wouldn't work across a USB bus anyway.