hello i have got a Seagate 2tb external drive which i want to use on my mac mini as a time machine backup,but i need to format it to APFS and on gparted it does not show apfs,does anyone know how i can format it please?
thank you.
The mac mini can’t do it?
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no for some reason disk utility does not see it,i also have a cyclone external drive which i was using as my time machine backup but i removed it as the disk for the time machine backup by mistake and now my mac mini cant see that either and my laptop running Manjaro cant see the cyclone at all,it can only see the seagate.
thank you.
Maybe it will be enough if you use gparted to generate a new partition table on the drive?
I don’t know whether there is a linux driver for apfs.
Perhaps hfs or hfs+ will work?
There is also apfs-fuse in the AUR.
Maybe that can do the job? Together with gparted … don’t know.
gparted does not have apfs
thank you.
If Mac does not see it at all (as unformatted drive ready to be initialized), how formatting it will help?
Does it even work?
cyclone did work until i removed by mistake,i am trying to format the seagate on my manjaro laptop as i can see it.
thank you.
I don’t know what cyclone is, presume something from Mac.
Why would Seagate external HDD stop working after you removed it by accident?
Can you check SMART data?
Alternatively, wipe it (with dd command), so Mac see brand new, uninitialized drive.
Or format it to FAT32 or something. Mac MUST see a hard drive, if it doesn’t, then I would say this is hardware problem.
Fat32 wont work as i am on Big Sur which uses apfs now
i am logging off for now as i am taking the wife for her covid injection.
i will login again tomorrow.
thanks for replies so far.
Ok, I’ll wait until you try other things I suggested in previous post and report back with results and SMART data.
Well said! Covid injection. Not vaccine. Won’t comment further.
Search for apfs in pamac, in AUR there is an experimental driver. Also You can build apfsprogs.
You can try to make hfs+ filesystem on destination partition, and later convert it into apfs in Disk Utility.
See: techviewer.com|how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-drives-on-macos-big-sur for directions.
Or try formatting as ntfs which Big Sur should read.
I think this is a Sumvision Cyclone media player, with Samsung hard drive for storage
The hard drive might not be recognised in MacOS if it has msdos (Master Boot Record) partition
I would suggest using gparted to create a new gpt partition table on the drive
That should allow the Mac to recognise the drive and create APFS partitions
How to format your drive APFS on macOS 11 (Big Sur) and later | Seagate Support
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