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Why doesn't APFS appear as an option for formatting an external SSD? I'm attempting to format a new Samsung T7 on a MBP with Monterey OS v. 12.6. The partition button remains greyed out in disk utility as well, before and after reformatting to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). From advice I see elsewhere, there's a "Scheme" option that also doesn't appear....
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.6
By default, disk utility only shows you the volumes on the disk, not the drive itself.
You cannot change the partition map of a volume and all of the commercial drives come formatted with a MBR partition scheme.
You have to select “show all devices“ from the view, pop-up menu in disk utility. Once you do that, you can select the Device and Erase, or Partition it with the appropriate partition scheme they need to be GUID partition schemes.
By default, disk utility only shows you the volumes on the disk, not the drive itself.
You cannot change the partition map of a volume and all of the commercial drives come formatted with a MBR partition scheme.
You have to select “show all devices“ from the view, pop-up menu in disk utility. Once you do that, you can select the Device and Erase, or Partition it with the appropriate partition scheme they need to be GUID partition schemes.
And finally, I read your suggestion more closely, and realized I'd taken previous advice online to hightlight the option UNDER the name of the SSD, not the SSD itself. Once I took your advice, "scheme" was visible, allowing me to choose GUID partition, at which time APFS appeared in the dropdown menu. Clicked Erase, and all worked in a flash.
So thanks, Barney. Resolved and ready for the next uphill!
Marc
Did you select the device? It will be the top, left item with some name with company and size, usually.
If that doesn’t work, post a screenshot of Disk Utility with the device you are trying to erase selected.
Unfortunately, I've been 'showing all devices', but when I go to erase, the "scheme" option does not appear, and the partition button remains greyed out, Barney, so your suggestions don't get me where I need to go yet....
Thanks, tho!
Marc
Hopefully here are the 2 screenshots, Barney. I erased the T7 and chose the Mac OS Extended as the best option available because APFS wasn't listed as a choice. The Scheme option never appeared, and the partition button hasn't become operable with anything I've done.
With macOS 10.11+ I don't believe the "Partition" tab in Disk Utility works until there is at least one partition already available. With macOS 10.11+, you must select the physical drive and use the "Erase" tab to properly prepare the drive which will create a new partition table as well as format the drive with the file system of your choice. You will not get an option to "erase" an APFS volume/Container as MacOS Extended if you only select the APFS file system. You must select the physical drive to "erase".
didn't look like the links worked, so trying again....
APFS
