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alan_stein Author

Level 1

23 points

Disk Utility Taking Forever to Erase and Reformat

I just bought a SanDisk Exteme 500GB external SSD drive. It was formatted with ExFAT. I opened Disk Utility to erase and reformat it. I didn't pay attention to any options. It's now been running for a day and a half, with no indication of status. (It says Erasing "SanDisk Extreme SSD Media" and creating "SanDisk" (I put in a shorter name), underneath a thermometer that's blue all the way, left to right, and hasn't changed, and underneath it says "Running." Underneath that, the details it shows are the same as above, a repeat of Erasing "SanDisk Extreme SSD Media" and creating "SanDisk".) The disk itself is warm.

Is there a way of telling whether there's any progress being made or it's stuck? Should I let it keep going? If so, how long? Disk Utility won't let me do anything else in the meantime, won't eject the disk and won't quit, so if I want to quit I'd have to either Force Quit or restart my computer, which might also involve force quitting.

I'm using a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019) with Catalina 10.15.7. The external disk is connected with USB-C.

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 1, 2020 1:18 AM

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,062 points

Posted on Nov 1, 2020 10:24 AM

It sounds like it is stuck. It shouldn't take too long to erase a 500GB SSD. I would start over making sure to select the physical drive in Disk Utility and selecting GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled) if the drive is only going to be used with macOS. If the drive is to be shared with Windows, then use Disk Utility to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and exFAT. To see the physical drive in Disk Utility you will need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices".

You can try Force Quitting Disk Utility by right-clicking or Option-clicking the Disk Utility icon on the Dock and selecting "Force Quit".

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Disk Utility Taking Forever to Erase and Reformat

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