File system formatter failed. : (-69832) - Cant format external drive

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File system formatter failed. : (-69832) - Cant format external drive

Hi everyone, so the other day I was browsing on my WD My Passport 4tb drive you know the one made for Mac OS to use with Time Machine and it had my backups on it and suddenly one day it was not responsive and me being dumb pulled out the cable and then when I went to plug it back in, nothing was working so I decided to try and format but only after connecting the drive for 5 mins the "device unrecognised" warning massage comes and asks what to do. Then I click erase, the set it up as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the usual GPUID and everything but everytime the operation fails.

This is what comes with under "erase process has failed".

Erasing “WD My Passport 25E4 Media” (disk2) and creating “Backup”

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Unmounting disk

Creating the partition map

Waiting for partitions to activate

Formatting disk2s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Backup

newfs_hfs: MarkExtentUsed::pread(3, 0x7f8c56016000, 512, 8192): Input/output error

Mounting disk

Could not mount disk2s2 after erase

File system formatter failed. : (-69832)

Operation failed…

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Im thourohgly not sure what to do, I just want this drive working again. Im on a late 2018 MacBook Pro on macOS Big Sur 11.4 and all my other stuff and drives etc work fine so its just this drive being weird now that I cant reformat it or something like that. any advice would be appreciated :)

Ask away questions if anyone has any!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jul 16, 2021 8:06 PM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

72,186 points

Jul 17, 2021 10:50 AM in response to Dasi1

It sounds like the WD drive may have failed. You can try checking the health of the drive using DriveDx, but you will need to install a special USB driver so that the app can attempt to access the health information on the USB drive. However, even with the special USB driver there is no guarantee DriveDx can access the health information since the USB controller on some external drives block the necessary communication. If you can access the health report on the WD drive, then post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Also make sure to connect the WD drive directly to the laptop since an adapter, dock, or hub could be causing problems or not providing enough power to the drive. Also try using another USB cable for the WD drive. Also try disconnecting all other external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.

You can also try erasing the entire physical drive instead of just the volume/partition. With later versions of macOS 10.13+ you need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.

Edit: Forgot to include a link to DriveDx:

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

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Answer 2

Dasi1 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 17, 2021 6:46 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks for the suggestion, I didnt realise there was a program on Mac to download but I did it on Windows instead. Might keep DriveDx downloaded for my other drives lol. (Read below on what I did and what it came down to)

So I forgot to add this but later on that day, I decided to ask my one of friends for help and they basically did the usual checks on my windows PC instead connecting the drive to that and we ended up finally checking the drive using crystal disk info and it came out with a health status of bad and where it was bad was the "rear error rate" which was at 1 for everyone 1 time so basically 100% of the time. I don't know how just pulling out the cable connecting the drive fully messed it up but its warranty ends in 2022 so hopefully WD responds and I can get a different unit. I think this unit is useless now after that error since I cant do anything at all to the drive since I cant read or write to it so cant process any of the applications on it. Any advice or should I just wait until WD responds, only thing is I dont have my original receipt, only the box cables etc and the device itself?

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Answer 3

Dasi1 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 18, 2021 10:02 PM in response to HWTech

Yeah so basically I am able to RMA it as the drive is now "bad" and still in the three year warranty period and even my mate said exactly the same thing you said where the drive shouldn't have gone bad like that after just pulling it out. I'll be sending it out soon and hopefully I can get the a replacement back sooner than later. Thanks anyways :)

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Answer 4

Jul 18, 2021 9:32 AM in response to Dasi1

I don't believe I've ever seen the "Read Error Rate" get that bad on any drive. I doubt it was caused by unplugging the drive, but the possibility cannot be eliminated either. Since this attribute is beyond its expected value, then there is nothing else you can do to salvage the drive. Usually drive vendors rely on the manufactured date of the drive/product if a sales receipt is not available.

Good Luck.

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File system formatter failed. : (-69832) - Cant format external drive

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