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Unable to partition an external SSD in Mac OS Extended format

I have erased and formatted my external SSD in Mac OS Extended format however 'partition' remains greyed out. HFS+ appears successful. Am trying to partition this drive 50:50, half for Time Machine and will reformat the other half ExFAT for sharing files across mac/pc machines.



iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Aug 2, 2021 5:43 AM

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Posted on Aug 2, 2021 5:50 AM

The problem may have to do with the installed system. High Sierra is more forgiving than Catalina and Big Sur on SSDs.


Use the View menu -> Show all devices on Disk Utility to make sure you are partitioning the top most device, and not a subdevice.

2 replies

Aug 2, 2021 10:04 AM in response to a brody

Thanks for the tip on "View menu -> Show all devices on Disk Utility to make sure you are partitioning the top most device, and not a subdevice."


After reformatting the top most device into GUID Partition Map, I was able to create a partition for Time Machine and reformat half the second half of the drive in ExFAT.



Unable to partition an external SSD in Mac OS Extended format

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