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First Aid failed on external drive: An internal error has occurred (-69610)

After a lot of attempts, I finally got rid of the zero kb partition formatted as Uninitialized on my external hard drive. But here's a new problem. I tried to partition my external drive but it failed with the error, "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed. Please verify and repair each volume individually and then try again. : (-69803) Operation failed..." So I then ran First Aid on the disk as a whole, the operation was successful! However, when I scanned the "Untitled" partition, First Aid failed with the error, "An internal error has occurred. : (-69610) Operation failed..."

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Jenny Zeng

Jenny Zeng

Answered on Tuesday, January 27, 2026

To fix the error reading "An internal error has occurred (-69610), "try to erase your external hard drive in macOS Recovery. Note that this will remove all data on the drive. So back up your files before proceeding!

  1. Eject your external hard drive.
  2. Reboot your Mac and press Command-R when the screen turns black.
  3. Release the keys when the Apple logo shows up.
  4. Connect the external drive to your Mac.
  5. Open Disk Utility.
  6. Click View > Show All Devices.
  7. Select your external hard drive and click Erase.
  8. Name your drive.
  9. Choose a proper format.
  10. Keep the scheme GUID Partition Map.
  11. Click Erase again.
  12. After that, you can run First Aid on your external drive again or repartition it as you like.

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