External Harddrive unreadable after formatting to exFAT via Diskutility

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External Harddrive unreadable after formatting to exFAT via Diskutility

Dear Community- I´ve made an (inretrospect) avoidable mistake.

I formatted a brand new external harddrive to from FAT32 to exFAT since I work with Files that easily exceed 4gb.

So now: I grew up on Windows and this was my first time using the DiskUtility Tool. I did not change the view from volumes to devices and worked with the volume.

I gather from the now free space on the drive that I am missing the firmware to boot.

I´ve contacted the manufacturer since they don´t offer downloads on their website.

But is there anything else Icould do besides buying a data recovering program that exceeds the price of my harddrive?

Thanks a lot

Posted on Dec 1, 2023 10:34 AM

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Answer 1

Cathie B Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2023 11:47 AM in response to Cathie B

After a lot of trial and error via Terminal and more- I thought duck it and just plugged into my trusty old pc tower....... It fixed itself. Is there an explanation how I can do this on MacOs? If I happen to not be around a windows powered computer? Would my Macbook have done the same?

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Answer 2

Cathie B Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2023 10:37 AM in response to Cathie B

adding the error message when I run first aid:

Repairing file system.

Volume is already unmounted.

Performing fsck_exfat -y -x /dev/rdisk3s1

Checking volume.

Checking main boot region.

Main boot region is invalid. Trying alternative boot region.

Checking alternative boot region.

Alternative boot region is invalid.

The volume could not be verified completely.

File system check exit code is 1.

Restoring the original state found as unmounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

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External Harddrive unreadable after formatting to exFAT via Diskutility

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