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User profile for user: MacOnlyRecently
MacOnlyRecently Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Formatting external drives

Hi, I've been a PC user almost exclusively and am still finding my way with my MacBook Pro, now updated to Big Sur.


With PCs, formatting external drives was a snap; with mac, not so much. At least not for me.


I chose the full format, meaning security options to make sure the data were gone, and MacOs Extended (journaled). This meant, to me, that the drive should have been completely empty at the end of the process, but for whatever it needed to keep the drive itself working.


Wrong. There is an unexplained 800 MB file--almost 1G--that I have yet to find any description of anywhere.


Does someone in this community know what it is, why it's necessary, and why I can't get rid of it?


Thank you so much!

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Jan 2, 2022 6:05 AM

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3 replies
User profile for user: David McKinlay
David McKinlay
User level: Level 7
22,882 points

Jan 2, 2022 6:28 AM in response to MacOnlyRecently

Welcome to the forums - and Macintosh OS.


If you are talking about the Mac's drive, the hidden partition is the recovery drive with which a user can reinstall the OS and undertake some drive repair functions. Apple explains it in the support document Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon. A slightly different procedure exists for older Intel Macs.


Familiarise yourself with Disk Utility which is used to reformat drives. See Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac. Note that Apple File System (APFS) is the file system used by macOS 10.13 (released in 2017) or later.


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User profile for user: MacOnlyRecently
MacOnlyRecently Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jan 2, 2022 6:22 AM in response to David McKinlay

Thank you for such a quick reply.


Since I hadn't intended to use this drive for that purpose and was never asked if I wanted to do so, I find it odd that it was forced on my drive anyway. I'm all for having a way to get my computer back if it crashes, believe me, but I'd like to have some input on the decisions. Sigh.


Again, thank you so much for your speedy reply.

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Formatting external drives

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