Mac Mini M1 cant Erase Partiton on external SSD Drive

Question

Mac Mini M1 cant Erase Partiton on external SSD Drive

Hi.

I have an external SSD drive to store samples for Logic-X.

I erased it and out of the blue I had two partitions which have not been there before.

In other words he kept the old name and made a second partiotn with this drive name.

In my expereince erasing a drive menas I go back to one partiton and everything is erased.

I thought I can erase the second partition with the disk_utl but NO I cant erase this partition.

Is this a bug in the disk_utl?

I just want to have one partiton for the whole SSD, which is not possible with disk_utl on the mac M1

Cheers

A.

Posted on Nov 28, 2021 12:23 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

D.I. Johnson

Level 7

22,373 points

Nov 28, 2021 12:37 PM in response to logicpro7composer

Hello, logicpro7composer.

Sorry that you're having this trouble.

The new Apple Silicon Macs use APFS drive formatting for SSDs.

Use Disk Utility to Partition the drive, don't simply erase it. Partitioning will reformat it. Use the APFS format with GUID partition scheme. Once you have repartitioned the SSD, you can use Disk Utility to add and delete APFS volumes to the drive.

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on your Mac - Apple Support

EDIT - It IS possible to have a single partition on an APFS formatted drive. Format the drive, then ADD a single APFS volume to the Container that has been created.

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Answer 2

Nov 28, 2021 3:17 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

Thank you for your Help.

Repartoning was one of my ideas as well, mac user since 1996 here.

But repartoning the whole drive is greyd out in the disk utl. aplication.

This made me to ask here, becasue it makes no sense to me.

Thanks again.

A.

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Mac Mini M1 cant Erase Partiton on external SSD Drive

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