Help in erasing external drive in Disk Utility for CCC back-up

[Peter Franks]

Anyone have any idea why Disk Utility won't erase an external drive for back up.

I have a back-up of my old High Sierra OS on an external drive, but I now want to overwrite it with Sierra because I went back to it on my MBP and need to back up drive. It just worked better for me than HS on an older MBP. So want to back up this over the old HS drive.

When trying to erase the external drive and change back to Mac Extended Journaled, it won't work and keeps showing this error every time I click erase:

Erasing APFS Volume File Content
An internal error has occurred.
Operation failed…

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/preparing-your-backup-disk-backup-os-x#sierra_elcapitan

Also, the drop down on the CCC link shows 'Guid' Partition option, but my Sierra doesn't show this, just the name and the Format option, no Scheme, and the partition option is blanked out in the bar as well.

Question is, once you've gone APFS can you not erase the drive to make it Extended Journaled anymore, or is there something else that's causing this?

Thanks

 

[chown33]

Did you choose "Show all devices" in Disk Utility's View control?

See this post for more info, with screenshot:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/smart-status-not-available.2172847/#post-27169440

 

[Peter Franks]

I don't have that 'View' option on there, is it hidden somewhere?
Did you mean I'm clicking the name of drive rather than the parent one?

 

[chown33]

I don't have that 'View' option on there, is it hidden somewhere?

Look in the menus.

It should also be a toolbar option. Try configuring the toolbar, and it should be an icon on that sheet.

Did you mean I'm clicking the name of drive rather than the parent one?

The name of the disk drive (device) is the parent of the volumes that reside on the drive. If you're not seeing a hierarchical view, then you're not in "Show all devices" mode. You need to get there or you can't partition the drive.

It might help if you post a screenshot of what your Disk Utility window is showing. Right now, I'm guessing at what you see, based on the limited descriptions so far.

 

[Peter Franks]

Thanks for your help Chown. I will be home tomorrow and check this when I am back. Appreciated.

 

[NoBoMac]

I've seen some odd behavior when erasing. What usually works is to just do a reformat as exFAT, on the top level, then format for Mac

 

[Peter Franks]

Yes it was weird. I don't have that 'view' at all in my toolbar options for some reason. No icon for it. Eventually it managed to erase the external SSD, but it took many tries for some reason. And then I had to do several more times before it showed on desktop or changed the name of the drive. That was very odd. Initially it erased it, but didn't take to the name I'd tried to change until I tried it a few more times. It was definitely not as it should be.

I know it's probably unrelated to it, but I remembered when doing the clone, they ask you at the end if you would like to make a recovery, and I clicked 'No', whether that is in any way relevant. Should we do that? I'm pretty sure the SSD I have in here now was originally a CCC clone because I went back to 'Sierra' and took out the SSD of 'High Sierra' and put the CCC 'Sierra' in, but it was still bootable without one, regardless of making the 'recovery' that's offered after CCC clone. I probably should have done that, on reflection.

 

[Fishrrman]

If the drive that is INSIDE of your MacBook was originally created as a clone using CCC, what might be happening is:

CCC opens, and sees that you are trying to copy "the clone" to another drive.
BUT... it "thinks" that you might be "restoring" the "backup" to the original drive, but CCC doesn't know it's a NEW drive instead.

Just IGNORE the restore.
Click "clone" instead and go on from there.

 

[Peter Franks]

If the drive that is INSIDE of your MacBook was originally created as a clone using CCC, what might be happening is:

CCC opens, and sees that you are trying to copy "the clone" to another drive.
BUT... it "thinks" that you might be "restoring" the "backup" to the original drive, but CCC doesn't know it's a NEW drive instead.

Just IGNORE the restore.
Click "clone" instead and go on from there.

Thanks, and do you recommend doing the Recovery partition option when CCC is finished?

 

[MacUser2525]

Thanks, and do you recommend doing the Recovery partition option when CCC is finished?

Yes it is nice to have on the drive, if the main drive in the machine fails and you are booting from the external needing a recovery option then you will have it. Without the partition on the backup drive you will not be able to use the recovery option.

 

[Peter Franks]

Yes it is nice to have on the drive, if the main drive in the machine fails and you are booting from the external needing a recovery option then you will have it. Without the partition on the backup drive you will not be able to use the recovery option.

Thank you!

 

[MacUser2525]

Thank you!

You are welcome.