High Sierra Does not Recognize unformatted external hard disk

Question

Level 1

5 points

High Sierra Does not Recognize unformatted external hard disk

Hi: I tried to format an unformatted external hard disk. I got the window that said to cancel-initialize or eject. I clicked on Initialize and the window disappeared and then nothing happened. I tried in on a Mac Mini with High Sierra and I got the same result. I then tried it on an older laptop with 10.8.5 and it recognized the hard drive and I managed to format the drive. I have seen this same problem stated on Slashdot. I hope you correct this problem soon.

Richard Burns

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/10/02/1842226/high-sierras-disk-utility-d oes-not-recognize-unformatted-disks

Posted on Oct 12, 2017 7:22 PM

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Answer 1

Keigo168

Level 1

4 points

Oct 19, 2017 10:32 PM in response to stanley 1

I have the same problem with High Sierra

for now the work around is to format the new Hard drive with older MacOs or Windows (NTFS or exFAT)(Then you can reformat to Extended (Journaled))

Also when you format in Windows 1st, and reformat to Extended (Journaled), you won't be able to conner to APFS

will get this error

"The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.StorageKit error 118.)

Operation failed…"

However if you format 1st on older MacOS to Extended (Journaled) and then connect to High Sierra, you can cover

the drive to APFS without issue.

Apple really need to fix High Sierra

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 9

77,668 points

Oct 20, 2017 9:49 AM in response to Keigo168

Good find Keigo 😉

In addition to having to select "Show All Devices"

It also have a hitch trying to erase, rename and reformat an existing Mac OS Extended (Journaled) external drive. I find that I have to change the Format to a different Format and then back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before the Apply button would become available.

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