Hard drive failed to mount as APFS after erase

[Roberts69]

I have few 2009 Apple iMac computers in the office with 500 GB hard drive. All of them, except one, successfully installed Catalina macOS using Dosdude's patch and run beautifully.

The one that couldn't... had a message saying, 'hard drive mount has failed' after attempted to erase the hard drive (APFS) using Disk Utility.

I can easily erase/mount the hard drive using exFat, Fat16, Fat32 etc, but not APFS. I know the hard drive is healthy and verified by the Disk Utility. I even swapped the hard drive with another healthy 500 GB drive with no luck.

I went as far as using a Linux live USB stick to erase the hard drive using the gparted utility.

Can anyone explain why this is happening?

 

[yomovil]

I had the same issue with an external HDD. I do not know why this issue happens but I guess it has something to do with the APFS containers and volumes.

How do I solve it?
If you know how to use terminal first get the disk ID using:

diskutil list

secondly, format the hard drive with any format system you like, let's say FAT32 using this command:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3  MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" "FAT32" 100%

the previous code is assuming you have the disk ID as /dev/disk3 and the format is going to be 100% FAT32.

After that, you can reformat it on AFPS or whatever you like.

I hope this helps you, Best

 

[Roberts69]

I had the same issue with an external HDD. I do not know why this issue happens but I guess it has something to do with the APFS containers and volumes.

How do I solve it?
If you know how to use terminal first get the disk ID using:

diskutil list

secondly, format the hard drive with any format system you like, let's say FAT32 using this command:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3  MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" "FAT32" 100%

the previous code is assuming you have the disk ID as /dev/disk3 and the format is going to be 100% FAT32.

After that, you can reformat it on AFPS or whatever you like.

I hope this helps you, Best

Thank you for your suggestion and was able to erased the hard drive to FAT32 just fine. Attempted to erase using APFS and failed again. This is so so strange!

 

[yomovil]

hi,

the trick is in the 100% part of the code, please, just reformat your HDD with the command I shared with you and then, I hope, you will be able to see APFS again on the menu.

By the way, you must do this through terminal and not via utility disk.


best

 

[Roberts69]

Yes. I followed your code 100% and used the terminal. I then, used the Disk Utility to create the APFS, which the mount failed.
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Just noticed something... just tried Dosdude's HighSierra and that went through!

 

[tyc0746]

I know you've already formatted a lot as APFS, but can I as why you felt the need to format HDs to APFS format when it's really intended for fast SSDs. Might have saved you some worry had you not had to format any of them.

Was it just so that you could encrypt them?

I ask as I have a bunch of 4TB HDs that I use for external storage and back-ups, that are simple HFS+ format and Catalina hasn't offered or forced any of them over to APFS and all see to be working fine.

 

[Roberts69]

I know you've already formatted a lot as APFS, but can I as why you felt the need to format HDs to APFS format when it's really intended for fast SSDs. Might have saved you some worry had you not had to format any of them.

Was it just so that you could encrypt them?

I ask as I have a bunch of 4TB HDs that I use for external storage and back-ups, that are simple HFS+ format and Catalina hasn't offered or forced any of them over to APFS and all see to be working fine.

FYI: You have to use APFS if you want to use Catalina macOS. HighSierra is the last to use the old file system

 

[yomovil]

I have been looking for a solution and I haven't been able to find it yet, sorry about that. However, in the image you shared it says "disk0s2" but I guess that is the disk inside of a container, therefore for being correct the command should state something like "disk0". BTW, if possible, put the HDD in a USB enclosure to format it.

It is indeed true that APFS doesn't give performance improvements over HFS+. Furthermore, I have seen 10% performance decrease (speed) when using APFS instead of HFS+. Having said that, I have found that in my libraries of pictures (over 1TB on Raw files) the corruption of permissions and disk faults have decreased as well, so I decided to migrate my HFS+ to APFS encrypted when possible (I am speaking about rotational HDD not SSD).

If the drive is going just to be used as backup or repository of files that are going to be edited external to the main computer, I believe APFS is fine, in my opinion.

 

[tyc0746]

FYI: You have to use APFS if you want to use Catalina macOS. HighSierra is the last to use the old file system

Thanks, had it in my head that only SSDs would require APFS, but looks like it's all types of storage ?