High Sierra: APFS disk utility problem

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Level 1

94 points

High Sierra: APFS disk utility problem

Hi, Is there something wrong with High Sierra DU?

My problem is that I can't erase an external SSD. Even if it looks like I have done it I either have 4 partitions that add up to twice the size of the drive. When I erased the drive with Windows I was back to a single partition but the partition function in DU is greyed out. I am running DU from the recovery partition and it does not help. I am on a 2011 MBP so I can't update to the latest OS.

Thanks in advance, Ronnie.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 21, 2020 9:24 AM

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Answer 1

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Dec 21, 2020 12:17 PM in response to BDAqua

Well, that was a waste of about 3 hours! Catalina erased and created a 750 APSF and a 250 HFS almost without a glitch. At one point there appeared to be two 250 and a 750 but after a restart it resolved and looks fine. Thanks for your interest and your response.

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Answer 2

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Dec 21, 2020 11:44 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi, Yes, I hit apply. But even in this last picture the size of the partition is bigger than the 1TB capacity of the drive. I have even run DU from the terminal and it won't delete using $ diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/disk2s2

it was returning "You must specify either an APFS Container Reference or Physical Store" but one time after connecting and disconnecting the drive it did appear to be deleting but then I was back trying to format and partition without success.

Anyway, I am waiting for an airbook to update to Catalina and I'll let you know what happens.

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