You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Power outage during Time Machine backup corrupted external hard drive

I was backing up (Time Machine) my older MacBook Air to a 5TB external hard drive when it was inadvertantly disconnected from power. The MacBook Air is fine, but the backup drive was corrupted and will not mount via Disk Utility or Terminal. I'm not concerned about the lost backups but I would like to erase/reformat the drive. Everything I have tried will not get it to mount. Is it toast?

MacBook Air 11″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Nov 23, 2022 12:36 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 23, 2022 1:30 PM

gshigenaka wrote:

I was backing up (Time Machine) my older MacBook Air to a 5TB external hard drive when it was inadvertantly disconnected from power. The MacBook Air is fine, but the backup drive was corrupted and will not mount via Disk Utility or Terminal. I'm not concerned about the lost backups but I would like to erase/reformat the drive. Everything I have tried will not get it to mount. Is it toast?


You can try Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices I would erase/reformat/initialize as new


Verify you are seeing the Parent drive not Volumes below


There maybe a force mount hold the Option key File>Mount



Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support (CA)


Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 23, 2022 1:30 PM in response to gshigenaka

gshigenaka wrote:

I was backing up (Time Machine) my older MacBook Air to a 5TB external hard drive when it was inadvertantly disconnected from power. The MacBook Air is fine, but the backup drive was corrupted and will not mount via Disk Utility or Terminal. I'm not concerned about the lost backups but I would like to erase/reformat the drive. Everything I have tried will not get it to mount. Is it toast?


You can try Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices I would erase/reformat/initialize as new


Verify you are seeing the Parent drive not Volumes below


There maybe a force mount hold the Option key File>Mount



Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support (CA)


Power outage during Time Machine backup corrupted external hard drive

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.