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I bought a new external HD from WD and it is set as read only. I have tried to erase and reformat, but every time I try to erase it gives me an error message. I've run the repair command, and it states everything is OK on the disk, but erase doesn't work.
Connecting to a 27 iMac 2020 computer.
iMac
Yes, that was what I as using. I ran First aid and it said the disk was fine, but when I attempt to erase & reformat I get
Erase process has failed. Click Done to continue.
Erasing “Elements” (disk2s1) and creating “Elements”
The volume “Elements” on disk2s1 couldn’t be unmounted because it is in use by process 26735 (diskimagesiod)
Couldn’t unmount disk. : (-69888)
Operation failed…
Lynda, this might help. It's another thread on this same subject from 2017.
WD External Drive is Read Only? - Apple Community
That appears to be the issue, but now that I've bought the Paragon App, I find that I'm not the only one having issues on a Mac using Ventura. So now I wait until someone replies to the request for assistance. Two individual have already posted this problem, with no answers on the Community page.
You don'y need the Paragon app unless you want to leave your drive formatted NTFS for Windows. Your imitial post was that you could not format the drive. Use Disk Utility as already suggested, select the top level of the drive and format it for your Mac.
I've tried that more times than I can count. Doesn't work. After downloading Paragon, I found out it had not been updated for Ventura. Did some on-line searches looking for additional solutions and found an article saying that Paragon had finally updated its program to run Ventura, but it didn't work for me. I've filed a request for them to get back to me with instructions or refund my money. Their request form does not even have a link for Ventura, so I had to list an old version to even be able to submit my request. Not confidence building.
This article from Apple on Erasing an External Drive
Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac
The caveat , as previous Contributor mentioned
Did you try using the Disk Utility and running "First Aid" on the drive?
In the view popup menu, select Show All Devices. Select the device and try erasing that.
Thanks, but that is what I've been doing. No success.
Then it appears the drive is defective. Send it back to WD and buy a quality drive.
How to reformat a new 12 TB hard drive that won't allow me to erase?
