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frankhatton

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 3, 2023
1
0
When I try to format a 4TB external drive using Terminal I get the following. How should I format the drive? :

Last login: Sat Sep 30 06:51:18 on console

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users-macbook:~ frankhatton$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 121.0 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +121.0 GB disk1
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data 56.5 GB disk1s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 2.1 GB disk1s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 1.2 GB disk1s3
4: APFS Volume VM 2.1 GB disk1s4
5: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 9.8 GB disk1s5
6: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 9.8 GB disk1s5s1

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 4.0 TB disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +4.0 TB disk3
Physical Store disk2s2
1: APFS Volume mybook8 51.4 GB disk3s1

users-macbook:~ frankhatton$ sudo diskutil eraseDisK eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2
Password:
eraseDisk does not appear to be a valid file system format
 
Terminal is complaining that eraseDisk does not appear to be a valid file system format.
Of course, that's the problem--too many "eraseDisk" commands
Try the same command, without the second eraseDisk command.
 
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