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Cannot format external hard drives anymore "The calling process or user lacks the proper privileges to perform this operation"

M

mbosse

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2015
644
206
Vienna, Austria
Hello,

Today I ran into an issue I never had before - I cannot format external hard drives anymore except I use terminal. The error warning I receive is:

"The calling process or user lacks the proper privileges to perform this operation"
Click to expand...

Hardware:
MacBook Pro 14" M1
macOS Sequoia 15.3.2 (with only one admin user)

This happens with several external hard drives (either single drives or RAIDs), enclosures and with or without a hub in between - it doesn't matter. If I start a secure erase it works for some time and then it aborts with the above error message which from then on seems to be stuck to the enclosure in question. Using 'First Aid' in Disk Utility doesn't change anything. None of the drives in question have a password set.

I can force the MBP to format the disk with terminal but here I do not know how I force it to a secure erase. Also, the entire issue should not happen at all in the first place.

Any ideas? I have now restarted the MBP and will try again, let's see!

Thanks a lot,
Magnus
 
Last edited:
It happened again although I changed the permissions of DU as you suggested. Only a restart helped. What I noticed was that such happened after a formatting process failed due to an accidental disconnection of the hard drive in question.
 
What happens if you DO NOT CHOOSE "secure erase"?
Will the drive erasure go through that way?

There are "other ways" to securely erase a drive...
 
Fishrrman said:
What happens if you DO NOT CHOOSE "secure erase"?
Will the drive erasure go through that way?

There are "other ways" to securely erase a drive...
Click to expand...
Same - a simple or a secure erase would then always trigger the same error message. What 'other ways' are you referring to?
 
mbosse said:
Same - a simple or a secure erase would then always trigger the same error message. What 'other ways' are you referring to?
Click to expand...
A less secure, but sufficient safe way to erase data from a volume is to
- format it, no erasing,
- fill it with waste (f.e. very large empty bitmaps),
- delete all those and empty the bin.
Only top experts would find some of your original data.
;JOOP!
 
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"What 'other ways' are you referring to?"

OK, here's one. This works ONLY on drives formatted to HFS+ (NOT on APFS).
Scrounge up an old copy of Drive Genius.
DG has a "Shred" option, that works either on the entire drive or only on "free space".
See if that works for you (either way).

If it won't shred (secure erase) the entire drive, perhaps you could:
a. use the terminal to do a "regular" (quick) erase
and then
b. use DG to shred all the "free space" (which of course is the whole drive).
 
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mbosse said:
Thank you both @Fishrrman and @Sciuriware for your help. I will try that should my problems resurface, but in general I think I should not have said problems in the first place.
Click to expand...
Tip: if you want to erase a (hard) disk to throw it away safely:
Take an electric drill, measure at least 6mm and drill 4 holes through the entire centre.
And do this NOT by accident!
HaHa
;JOOP!
 
OP:

Do you have ANOTHER computer you could try re-formatting these drives on?

Can be a Mac or PC -- doesn't matter.

Sometimes "whatever works"... is the solution.
 
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