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Samsung Portable SSD T7 not working with Catalina

I tried to connect a 1TB Samsung Portable SSD T7 to my MacBook Pro running under macOS Catalina, but failed to do so.

Starting DiskUtility, I noticed that the SSD is formatted as FAT32, that the disk cannot be partitioned, and that erasing/reformatting the disk as APFS is not available.

I also downloaded the T7 software from Samsung, but to no avail. The software simply claimed wrongly that the disk was not attached.

I wonder what I can do in this situation.

Also I would like to know which portable SSDs work with Catalina.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 12, 2020 1:00 PM

Best reply

Norbert E. Fuchs Author

Level 1

30 points

Posted on Aug 13, 2020 12:29 PM

Right, here is a sketch of my solution.

Obviously the SSD T7 was locked which prevented its partitioning and formatting. Twice I downloaded T7 software from the Samsung website that, however, did not even recognise the SSD.

From the Samsung technical support I finally got this link for the T7 software: http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

I downloaded and installed this software. In "System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General" I allowed the "System Software of Samsung Electronics" to run on my MacBook.

This software recognised the T7 and I could unlock it. After that I could partition and format the SSD T7 as APFS.

All of this information did not come with the installation guide of the SSD T7.

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Samsung Portable SSD T7 not working with Catalina

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