APFS format fails

Question

Level 1

4 points

APFS format fails

When I try to format my external Crucial P5 2TB M.2 NVMe PCLe SSD on my M1 MacBook Air using disk utility on OS Monterey I keep getting the following....

Erasing “ASMT USB 3.2 Device Media” (disk4) and creating “Untitled”

Unmounting disk

Creating the partition map

Waiting for partitions to activate

Formatting disk4s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Untitled

Initialized /dev/rdisk4s2 as a 2 TB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 155648k journal

Mounting disk

Creating a new empty APFS Container

Unmounting Volumes

Switching disk4s2 to APFS

Couldn’t read partition map. : (-69876)

Operation failed…

Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Aug 9, 2022 10:21 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Mal-S

Level 5

4,972 points

Aug 9, 2022 10:37 AM in response to ducatijim

A few non-specific things to try.

If you have any anti-virus or cleanup apps installed, uninstall them according to the developer’s instructions.
If you are connecting the SSD via a hub, try again with the SSD plugged directly into your MBA
Try again in Safe Mode
Try a different USB cable
Quit any running apps before trying again

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Answer 2

ducatijim Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 17, 2022 8:42 AM in response to ducatijim

Well folks here's what finally happened, I took it back to the store and they attached it to their machine and the same problem happened, then they took the SSD out of it's case and put it directly into a computer and it crashed it! So a brand new SSD was supplied under warranty.

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Answer 3

PRP_53

Level 10

90,799 points

Aug 9, 2022 10:57 AM in response to ducatijim

In Disk Utilities >> View >>View All Devices and choose the Upper Most Name of the Manufacturers Device " Crucial P5 "

Erase and Format as desired

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Answer 4

ducatijim Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 14, 2022 7:46 AM in response to Mal-S

Thanks Mal but none of the above worked 😩 The SSD will format in other formats but not APFS so I'm taking it back tomorrow and let the retailer have a look at it.

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