I gave my old MacBook to my daughter and want to use the external drive for my other MacBook. I tried deleting the files but after nearly 2 days of "deleting" in never finished and I had to exit. Nothing was deleted. I am now trying to delete individual folders and it is taking forever. How do I wipe this drive and reconfigure to a different computer?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14
Use Disk Utility to erase the disk: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
Use Disk Utility to erase the disk: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
Disk Utility is not able to erase the external disk? That's just not right. What was the exact error message?
Forget about erasing individual files or folders using the Finder. It will take weeks, perhaps months.
It could be frozen because the Finder is preoccupied with erasing the external disk. If you don't want to wait forever, force it to shut down by pressing and holding its power button / Touch ID button until it shuts down. That takes about five seconds or so.
Interrupting that Finder process might cause that disk's contents to become corrupted, but that's ok since you are going to erase it anyway.
I tried to use that but it gave me an error message that it couldn't erase the disk. I am continuing to try and delete manually, but it is taking forever.
I don’t remember exactly and my computer is frozen at the moment. I’ll try again later. Thanks for the suggestion
How to wipe a Time Machine drive and reconfigure to a different MacBook?
