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User profile for user: genenapp
genenapp Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

can't reformat an external drive

Just received a 30 TB (yes, TB) external ssd drive that seems to be MS formatted. It fails to erase with Disk Utility giving a disk error of -69854. I've run diskutil in Terminal many ways and always encounter a roadblock. For ex, no mount point, must own drive, and others I've coped with these but no success.


The 30 TB drives seems to be pretty new on the market, sold by Toshiba and ydigos.com, a Chinese sales point. Mac support came up with nothing but I didn't't ask for a Sr Tech.


BTW, failures are he same on a Mac mini running 13.2.1. Asdvice gratefully received.


Running 13.3.1 on a Mac Air.

MacBook Air, macOS 13.3

Posted on Apr 15, 2023 3:12 PM

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User profile for user: James Brickley
James Brickley
User level: Level 5
5,056 points

Posted on Apr 15, 2023 4:01 PM

The big questions...


Specific make/model of drive?


How much did you pay for a 30TB SSD? Should be at least $3,000+ USD because if it's not, it may very well be a scam. In other words, too good to be true.


Sadly, there's a lot of fake drives for sale that do funky things to fool the OS into thinking it has that capacity but you will soon find out that it's far less storage in reality. If it's something you can disassemble, you will be able to quickly tell it's missing quite a few flash chips. There should be quite a few flash chips and the drive would be heavy. If it's feather light it could be as simple as a super cheap flash chip equivalent to what's in thumb drives and just some fancy firmware chip that lies to the operating system.

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User profile for user: James Brickley
James Brickley
User level: Level 5
5,056 points

Apr 15, 2023 4:01 PM in response to genenapp

The big questions...


Specific make/model of drive?


How much did you pay for a 30TB SSD? Should be at least $3,000+ USD because if it's not, it may very well be a scam. In other words, too good to be true.


Sadly, there's a lot of fake drives for sale that do funky things to fool the OS into thinking it has that capacity but you will soon find out that it's far less storage in reality. If it's something you can disassemble, you will be able to quickly tell it's missing quite a few flash chips. There should be quite a few flash chips and the drive would be heavy. If it's feather light it could be as simple as a super cheap flash chip equivalent to what's in thumb drives and just some fancy firmware chip that lies to the operating system.

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User profile for user: Old Toad
Old Toad
User level: Level 10
210,437 points

Apr 15, 2023 4:13 PM in response to genenapp

All of the Toshiba sites which talk about the 30 TB drive say it's a HDD, not an SSD. I believe you may have been scammed as James has already pointed out.


Read these sites:


Toshiba 30GB Hard Drives (HDD, SSD & NAS) - eBayeBayhttps://www.ebay.com › Toshiba-30GB-Hard-Drives-...


Toshiba Details Plans for 30TB and Larger HDDsTom's Hardwarehttps://www.tomshardware.com › News


Toshiba reveals 30TB disk drive to arrive by 2024The Registerhttps://www.theregister.com › 2022/02/09 › 30tb_tosh...


I would contact the vendor and demand a full refund. If there's any question contact your credit card company and open a fraudulent sales incident. On second thought I'd contact the credit card company first.


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can't reformat an external drive

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