Cannot erase a memory stick

[Spotty Muldoon]

I have 1 64GB Sandisk Memory Stick which is presently 'formatted' as 'Windows NT File System (NTFS)' and want it to go back to 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'. It will not do it and says 'Erase process has failed' There is another message which says 'Couldn't modify partition map. : (-69874)'. None of this means anything to me. is there a way to do what I want in the Terminal? Otherwise I have got a useless 64GB drive. I have a MacBook Air M1 if that's any help.

Thanks

Brian

 

[doobydoooby]

Can you currently read the stick? NTFS doesnt play nicely with Mac OS, you can't write to it, but you should at least be able to read whats on it; I just wonder if the drive is corrupt. How about trying to reformat it to Windows FAT 32 as a start and see if thats possible?

 

[Spotty Muldoon]

No, I can't read it. Tried erasing it to all the options, same result.

 

[Bigwaff]

Launch Disk Utility. Select menu View > View All Devices. Select top most device in tree for your 64GB stick. Now you should be able erase and format.

 

[Spotty Muldoon]

Tried that and it still will not erase. Must be corrupted. Thanks for the advice though. Unless there is another way via the terminal?

 

[doobydoooby]

Sure, you can do the same thing via Terminal, but if none of the above means anything to you, I'm not sure I would go down that route The potential for accidentally abusing your system tinkering under the bonnet is distinctly higher! But you can see how with google or YouTube if you want, the steps are easy

 

[Fishrrman]

Take it to a PC running Windows, and see if you can erase to exFAT on that.

If it won't erase -- even there -- then start looking for a replacement.

 

[Ruggy]

If you are in Disk utility try 'first aid'. It looks like you've already tried that as -69874 is most likely first aid telling you it can't complete but it might work if you do it a couple more times.
It's very likely a hardware problem but on the good side, they are probably a lot cheaper now than when you bought it and you can get a 64gb Sandisk Ultra for $9.99

 

[Fishrrman]

duplicate (deleted)

 

[arpanet]

I usually end up trying and failing with a different Mac since that is quick. Once it only worked using one running a much older OS: Mojave.

Using Windows has always worked.

After retiring my last Windows box, I twice had success reformatting using Windows running in VirtualBox on my Mac.