Home > Questions

How To Reformat The Fusion Drive When It Isn't The Startup Disk?

My 27-inch iMac from 2017 has a Fusion Drive installed. The performance didn't impress me, so I went with an external SSD Thunderbolt drive instead. I purchased an Envoy Express from OWC and installed a 1 TB 2280 M.2 NVMe SSD inside of it. With Photoshop launching in less than 4 seconds, the performance boost is astounding. Because of this, I was still able to replace the Fusion drive with an SSD and get the most of its performance benefits without having to disassemble my iMac. I'd like to reformat the Fusion Drive just for storage, but Disk Utility won't let me.. It prevents me from reformatting and constantly telling me that files are in use. Since the Envoy Express is my startup drive and has a complete copy of Big Sur installed, I'm not clear what is running on the Fusion Drive. Does

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Vain Rowe

Vain Rowe

Answered on Monday, April 29, 2024

Hi there, since the Fusion Drive is installed with macOS when it comes to you, you can formatting it by selecting each volume in Disk Utility. If this method fails and pops up an error, you can boot your iMac into the Internet Recovery Mode to complete the reformat task from the Fusion Drive instead of the external startup disk.

You can read this article to know how to boot into Internet Recovery Mode: Internet Recovery Mode on Intel and M1 Mac Explained

And if you want to fix the split Fusion Drive, please visit this post: How to Fix A Split Fusion Drive on iMac And Recover Data?

 

People Also Ask

Can I make my external hard drive compatible with both Mac and Windows PC?

This thread answers which file system is compatible with both macOS and Windows and how to format external hard drive for both Mac and PC.

iBoysoft author Amanda WongAmanda Wong

How do You Format an SD Card on MacBook Air?

This post tells you how to format an SD card on MacBook Air.

iBoysoft author Vain RoweVain Rowe

My external hard drive format suddenly changed on Mac?

Is your external hard drive not being ejected properly and labeled as MS-DOS? Check out this thread to learn about the file system and how to fix the unmounted drive.

iBoysoft author Jenny ZengJenny Zeng

Can I make my Windows drive compatible with my Mac?

This thread answers how to make the external hard drive to be compatible with both macOS and Windows without losing data.

iBoysoft author Amanda WongAmanda Wong

How to restore USB flash drive back to full capacity on Mac? Help!

If your USB drive is not showing its full capacity on Mac, you can restore it to its full capacity by following the steps in this thread.

iBoysoft author Jenny ZengJenny Zeng

How to format a hard drive for Mac and PC?

Read to learn how to format a hard drive for Mac and PC in simple way.

iBoysoft author Anna YuanAnna Yuan

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

MacでフラッシュドライブをNTFSにフォーマットする方法

Flash DriveをNTFS形式にフォーマットし、Macで読み書きする方法

この投稿では、MacでFlash DriveをNTFS形式にフォーマットする手順を詳しく説明します。さらに、macOSがNTFSドライブを読み書きできるかどうか、NTFSドライブをMacでフルに利用する方法についても解説します。

O processo de apagamento falhou no MacBook

'Processo de apagamento falhou' no Mac Interno e Externo

Vendo 'Processo de apagamento falhou' no MacBook ou Mac de mesa ao formatar unidades? Saiba como resolver no Mac interno e externo neste post.

Comment récupérer une carte SD formatée sur Windows et Mac

[Gratuit] Comment récupérer une carte SD formatée sur Windows et Mac?

Ce post explique si vous pouvez récupérer les données des cartes SD formatées sans logiciel ou gratuitement, et les étapes pour récupérer les cartes SD formatées sur Windows et Mac.