The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
I have a 4tb external drive, that has 1.8tb that cannot be deleted, seen, or reformatted. Can anyone advise how I can completely reformat this drive? Appreciated.
I don't believe macOS can handle more than 2TB on a FAT32 formatted drive.
I may be wrong, but that is what I remember.
Format the drive using a modern file system format.
From Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices
initialize the parent drive—If you can not format the parent drive then your drive has failed.
About Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
Erase a volume using Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
I cannot delete/reformat an external drive!
