Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

disk utility on high sierra fails to format brand new WD 4TB drive?

i bought a 4TB wd elements drive for time machine. it arrived formatted for windows. as i plugged it into my 2013 imac running high sierra, it mounted on my system as the drive 'elements'. the very first thing i did with it was to try and reformat (erase) it as apfs using disk utility. the disk unmounted and then immediately the disk utility operation failed. everything i tried to do within disk utility failed to take hold.

Dropbox - Screenshot 2017-12-30 23.47.33.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bdbz1i2uvtsv99w/Screenshot%202017-12-30%2023.40.28.png ?dl=0

Dropbox - Screenshot 2017-12-30 23.33.01.png

i decided that i must have had received a faulty drive and sent it back to amazon. a replacement drive arrived soon thereafter and i plugged it in, it mounted. and as soon as i tried to reformat the same thing happened.

Dropbox - Screenshot 2018-01-02 21.14.30.png

don't believe i got sent two faulty drives. there must be something wrong with disk utility in high sierra? is APFS not compatible with wd 4tb element external hard drives? drive will not mount any more. i have tried everything in how does one recover from this?


any help much appreciated.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), macOS High Sierra (10.13.2), 32 gb, 3 tb fusion drive

Posted on Jan 2, 2018 1:32 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 2, 2018 1:52 PM

In the Volume List popup menu, select Show All Devices.

Select the actual hard drive from the List, not the mounted volume.

Then, try to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

APFS on a rotational hard drive is not beneficial and has been reported to be problematic for some users here.

7 replies

disk utility on high sierra fails to format brand new WD 4TB drive?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.