Catalina destroying external drives

Chris_1503 Said:

"Catalina destroying external drives: When I tried to reformat it from Windows to Mac, the drive was unmounted then a message "Operation failed" appeared. Its icon never reappeared on the desktop."

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You are using Catalina

So, format the drive with APFS to see and use it.

To See It:

• Reset your SMC and your NVRAM:

Sometimes changes(i.e. updates) are made to the system and then settings (i.e. ports) become manipulated, technically. So, reset both on your Mac.

• Create a New Administrator User

Re-perform the format in a newly-created Administrator user - once complete log back into this current user and delete the one you just created and used for formatting it.

• Boot into Recovery Mode:

Format it using Disk Utility in there.

If you want to reformat drives in High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina open Disk Utility,

click View in the menubar and select Show All Devices.

This will now show you the Disk and not just the Volume.

When erasing/ formatting it is important to select the Disk not the indented

Volume icon. Click Erase.

Give the Disk a name.

Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (for all external disks)

Scheme: GUID Partition Map

Click Erase.

The Disk Utility> View> Show All Devices item came in with the arrival of High Sierra, read my first line.

Not another 'improvement' but alas another indication of how devoid of any real innovations the software

engineering department has become.