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External drive not mounting after being wrongly formatted on Mac

I reformatted an external drive from NTFS to HFS+ by erasing the volume. Now, I can't access the drive any more. In hindsight, I realize that I should've selected the actual drive rather than the volume. The drive is now grayed out and pops up errors when I try to format it again.

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Jenny Zeng

Jenny Zeng

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Just do what you were supposed to do: format the actual disk, and then the drive will mount again.

Take these steps:

  1. Open Disk Utility.
  2. Click View > Show All Devices.
  3. Select the top-level physical disk and click Erase.
  4. Name the drive.
  5. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
  6. Keep the scheme GUID Partition Map.
  7. Click Erase.

If you want to learn more about reformatting external drives on Mac, take a look at this guide: Reformat External Hard Drive for Mac/PC/Mac & PC| Best Format

 

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