Disk Utility seems to be stuck trying to delete a volume.
I'm trying to wipe an old Time Machine drive. It took a hugely long timing erasing an xART session and now it's stuck deleting the only volume on the disk.
What do you do when this happens? I could force reboot, but I'm afraid the drive will be damaged. How long do you leave it? it's been doing this process for more than an hour.
Thanks very much.
I'd just reboot and try again. Select View > Show all devices and select the device, not just volumes under it -- unless there are OTHER important volumes on that drive, of course. I don't think it is possible to physically damage the drive with that. Although sometimes installing a new system etc can be the final straw that just happens to break a drive...
FWIW some sources instruct to format a problematic device as FAT (MBR) to clear possible remains of partition table info before formatting as APFS (GUID) or whatever the desired final format is.
I'd just reboot and try again. Select View > Show all devices and select the device, not just volumes under it -- unless there are OTHER important volumes on that drive, of course. I don't think it is possible to physically damage the drive with that. Although sometimes installing a new system etc can be the final straw that just happens to break a drive...
FWIW some sources instruct to format a problematic device as FAT (MBR) to clear possible remains of partition table info before formatting as APFS (GUID) or whatever the desired final format is.
Thanks Matti. I’ll try FAT.
What to do when Disk Utility seems stuck
