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High Sierra's Disk Utility Does Not Recognize Unformatted Disks (tinyapps.org)

macOS 10.13's Disk Utility 17.0 (1626) does not recognize raw drives, reads a blog post, shared by several readers. From the post: Diskutil does recognize the drive. We'll use it to perform a quick, cursory format (e.g., diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NewDisk GPT disk0) to make the disk appear in Disk Utility, where further modifications can more easily be made. Plugging in an unformatted external drive produces the usual alert, "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer. Initialize... | Ignore | Eject", but clicking Initialize just opens Disk Utility without the disk appearing. There's an option in Disk Utility to view "all devices," but clicking that doesn't show raw disks, the blog post adds.

64 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. I am not surprised by oldgraybeard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple assumes everyone gets everything from Apple. And Apple would never sell a device that was not prepared at the factory.

    1. Re:I am not surprised by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      Apple assumes everyone gets everything from Apple.

      Has this ever been true? Sure, it's a funny line to toss out there, but Apple has obviously recognized that their products exist in a world beyond their control, which is why we see support for SMB, NTFS, and a host of other technologies and formats that didn't originate at Apple.

      To be sure, their support falls far short of what we see on Windows or Linux, but in the various Macs I've worked on, I've replaced RAM, batteries, SSDs, HDDs, and even created my own Fusion Drive, none of which I did using Apple-branded components. Clearly they designed their products to work with products they didn't create. That something otherwise is being reported here today is an upsetting departure from the status quo for Macs.

  2. So Apple.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you expect to format a drive to make it appear when you can't make it appear to format the drive?

    Do people think about this kind of thing anymore?

    1. Re:So Apple.... by sinij · · Score: 1

      How do you expect to format a drive to make it appear when you can't make it appear to format the drive?

      Try man mkfs. They are likely just piping error messages of some low level utility. For example, parted would return "error: /foo/bar: unrecognized disk".

    2. Re:So Apple.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Try man mkfs. They are likely just piping error messages of some low level utility. For example, parted would return "error: /foo/bar: unrecognized disk".

      Some OS component recognized the disk and announced that it was uninitialized, then offered to send them to initialize it. It's not acceptable for the subsequent tool not to recognize that there's a disk there, even if all it knows about it is that it can't do anything with it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:So Apple.... by tk77 · · Score: 1

      Well its more like man diskutil, as you can still see unformatted disks there and use diskutil eraseDisk ... to format it.

      A bigger issue is that when you plug an unformatted disk in, it pops up the usual message that its unreadable and to initialize it. Clicking initialize opens disk util which then does not show the unformatted drive (which it did in all previous versions). So for the average user, this could be confusing.

      This looks like it could just be a bug in Disk Utility. Hopefully.

    4. Re:So Apple.... by tk77 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but what "average user" is buying an unformatted drive? Virtually everything is pre-formatted out of the factory these days so users don't have to format in order to start using their new drives.

      A dumb bug to be sure -- but the impact should only be to those who have blanked out a drive on their own without re-formatting/re-initializing it at the same time.

      Yaz

      True. Also, in using the previous release to help test this (10.12) I couldn't find a way (via Disk Utility) to blank a disk. There used to be an option in Disk Utility that would let you initialize as "empty space". That seems to have gone away (shows how often I use it). I had to drop to the command line to clear the disk (w/ the help of dd). Something that the average user will also not be doing.

      Still would be nice to have these features in the gui. But I can live with it, as long as they don't remove them from the cli tools.

    5. Re:So Apple.... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Disk Utility is mostly a very thin wrapper around diskutil, so there's a good chance that this is a bug in the underlying frameworks, not the GUI.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:So Apple.... by Bongo · · Score: 1

      I thought Disk Utility.app called on diskutil anyway to do the format. But they both (?) rely on Disk Arbitration framework to know what's going on. So just something someone forgot to update when the framework was changed...?

    7. Re:So Apple.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      This could be the new "keyboard error, press any key to continue."

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:So Apple.... by tk77 · · Score: 1

      But yet diskutil displays all drives and allows you to initialize an unformatted disk, whereas Disk Utility does neither. Assuming they both use the same underlying framework then why would one display unformatted disks when the other does not? It would seem like there's something in the GUI that selectively displays the drives. This is already evident by the option to "show hidden" partitions (ie the rescue partition).

      So it looks like either Disk Utility is purposely ignoring unformatted disks (boo), or there's a bug where its not displaying them.

    9. Re:So Apple.... by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure the spinners I've put into my Mac Pro came that way too.

  3. It Just Works by sexconker · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're holding it wrong?

    1. Re:It Just Works by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      That might be true. A few years back, Apple changed the way monitor calibration works, reduced it so all you can do is change the "target white point." The rest somehow happens automatically or something, I don't know.

      Unless you press "option-shift" when you open the calibration tool. Then you get the full calibration tool. "Option-shift." Good luck figuring that one out. Hooray for intuitive UI!

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:It Just Works by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      Try adding a windows network shared printer to osx.. First, you have to hold down control and click on the add-printer dialog in order to add an 'advanced' button...
      seriously?

      Then there's the removal of the 'hidden' SSID support. While it does nothing for security, it does keep phone calls from techno illiterates down as they won't try connecting to networks they don't see in the dialog. This allows the creation of 'infrastructure' networks not meant for BYOD.

    3. Re:It Just Works by sexconker · · Score: 1

      That might be true. A few years back, Apple changed the way monitor calibration works, reduced it so all you can do is change the "target white point." The rest somehow happens automatically or something, I don't know.

      Unless you press "option-shift" when you open the calibration tool. Then you get the full calibration tool. "Option-shift." Good luck figuring that one out. Hooray for intuitive UI!

      Not as bad as LAN mode in Splatoon 2...
      http://en-americas-support.nin...

    4. Re:It Just Works by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      All this 'hiding' is fucking stupid. It isn't just apple, either. MS is doing it, too, with their new UI garbage. If I wanted to play hunt the wumpus, I'd load it in an emu. I don't want to play it with my UI environment.

      What is so terrible about having ONE panel per component (eg networking, display etc) with some tabs? Hint: if search boxes are needed on the UI to compensate for the layout, then the layout sucks.

  4. Uhhh... by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 4, Funny

    Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?

    --
    That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    1. Re:Uhhh... by infolation · · Score: 2

      Yes. I did. So... prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them along with this slice of humble pie, that comes direct from the oven of shame, set at gas mark 'egg on your face'.

  5. What a Bunch of Wimps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My CP/M system wouldn't read unformatted 8" floppys back in 1982.
    It took a day to get the right data sheets and write my own formatter in assembler.
    Damn kids today can't do anything.

  6. no the hardware went thin for looks and disk swapi by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    no the hardware went thin for looks and easy disk swapping was cut. Also apple can't have uses using cheaper non apple m2 pci-e ssds.

  7. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Complete nonsense, imac's dont have glued in screens at all, they are held in place by a magnetic interference fit and can be removed in under a minute with a sucker clamp. The HD is then easily accessible and replaceable. It has been this way since the first Aluminium unibody imacs 10 years ago. Imac's are very easy to work on.

  8. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What? Maybe System 7 was innovative. 9 was a desperate attempt to keep the ol' geezer marketable after their replacement OS effort Copeland was aborted. It was very uncertain whether or not Apple would even survive. OSX, even in it's initial craptastic state, was welcome relief.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  9. woz needs to make mac great again! by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    woz needs to make mac great again!

  10. Also not recognized for Time Machine- USB APFS by allanmccoy55 · · Score: 2

    Maybe I missed the warning, but I thought, why not convert my USB connected Time Machine drive to APFS... the conversion is allowed in Disk Utility, so I started it up. After a looonnnnggggg time (more than 6 hours, but less than 21 hours) it completed. And Time Machine says "Where is my backup disk?" It's right there, same name and everything, just APFS. OK, when checking disk selected, I see my disk a second time in the list, so I choose that. TM tells me that I need to erase the disk. Well, I really don't have anything much on this machine, so sure, let's erase it and start over. Only after it is erased, TM says it can't find the disk. NICE! So that's where that stands. Maybe I am having issues due to older hardware (the MacBook Pro still has an optical drive, for ghod's sake!) or something else, but I think that Time Machine is borked when it comes to APFS drives, at least USB ones (can't check any other's- or maybe I could partition the SSD and try to use the second partition for TM? hmm, something to try.

  11. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    To my knowledge the iMac Pro isn't available yet, so I would like to see the source that says the screen is glued to the chassis, preventing access to the drives.

  12. Just happened to me by sehryan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I ran into this exact problem today. Clicking "Initialize..." did nothing, with the drive not showing up in Disk Utility.

    Turned the enclosure off and back on, and clicked "Ignore." Disk came right up in the Utility without issues, and I was able to get it working from there.

    --
    The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
  13. Frontpage worthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So a minor bug in an Apple specific disk utility software is newsworthy? I'm going to start posting news about bugs in parted now.

    1. Re:Frontpage worthy? by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      apple fanboys have jimmies?

  14. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    but no ram door and how knows how the cooling is setup and how easy it will be to get to the ram / ssd (cards??)

  15. Just drop the disk from the peak of High Sierra by eminencja · · Score: 1

    The disk will then change its form (=reformat) and eventually erase old data.

    Pro tip: run command `top' to quickly get to the peak of High Sierra.

  16. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by the_B0fh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In other words, because you don't know, you just spout nonsense?

  17. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Display+Teardown/30260

    See Step 4.

  18. Re: So what? by Brockmire · · Score: 1

    Because Apple throws in a free windows or Linux PC with every MAC purchased? Fuck off.

  19. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

    Which like all imac screens is a magnetic fit.

    Not for the last couple of years. I don't know why they got away from it, but it sure was nice.

  20. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Maybe System 7 was innovative. 9 was a desperate attempt to keep the ol' geezer marketable after their replacement OS effort Copeland was aborted.

    System 7 was just an attempt to catch up to the rest of the computing world, which would let you put multiple applications side by side on a single display. There's nothing innovative about playing catchup. Besides, the only meaningful new features they implemented even for MacOS in 7 were scalable fonts and virtual memory, and those had been around in other operating systems for some time. There were lots of other minor changes from System 6 (like moving away from font suitcases) but those were the only big ones. The only other really cool MacOS feature wasn't even an OS feature, though it was made possible by MacOS 7's virtual memory support: Ram Doubler, aka compressed swap. This has only recently become a Linux kernel feature. It was very, very cool back then.

    NeXTStep was fairly innovative, in its day; use Unix underpinnings to provide a Macintosh-level ease of use experience, and object embedding to provide desktop functionality which had never been seen before. And then Apple made it slow and ruined its device independence because they didn't want to license Postscript for display PS and the rest is... well, the present.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  21. El Capitan neutered Disk Utility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/el-capitan-disk-utility-3634604/

    Shit changes like that are why I haven't moved to anything newer. At the time there were articles about how to get the older, full featured, Disk Utility to run under El Capitan. Can that older version still be made to run in Sierra and High Sierra?

  22. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2

    I'm old enough to remember when Apple announced plans to skip version 9 and go straight from Mac OS 8 to Mac OS X. Then they released a 9 anyway.

    Then your memory is failing.

    Apple announced Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 at the same time (I believe at WWDC '98). Mac OS 9 was available as stand-alone on Macs sold in that time frame as well as having code to handle running under Mac OS X.

    Needless to say, Mac OS X got most of the press. But I don't believe there was ever not going to be a Mac OS 9.

  23. Re:So what? by tricorn · · Score: 1

    Or just use fdisk and newfs if for some reason diskutil isn't working. Or dd /dev/zero over it for a few blocks first if things are still confused.

    I forget if gpt is available or if that's built in to fdisk, there are so many different versions of fdisk out there each with their own peculiarities and bugs.

  24. Re: So what? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    Virtualbox - free
    Linux - free

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  25. Re: no the hardware went thin for looks and disk s by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

    Since you love to talk shit about Apple constantly, what is a better desktop OS than OSX? Windows? Linux? Because no matter what your answer is I can come up with dozens of reasons why you're wrong.

  26. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    but no ram door and how knows how the cooling is setup and how easy it will be to get to the ram / ssd (cards??)

    The iMac RAM door is on the back, now.

  27. Carbon by itomato · · Score: 1

    Don't discount the "hidden" OS compatibility layers. Carbon, Blue and Yellow boxes mean a great deal (and Carbon lurks today). This was all an in-house effort, AFAIK. Behind the veneer, the old Openstep code has morphed and evolved again. Swift and all the new Core classes and portable Kits where always the roadmap for the future. There's no going back.

  28. Flashbacks of HD SC Setup by itomato · · Score: 1

    Had a horrible flashback to HD SC Setup and non-Apple branded disks.

    1. Re:Flashbacks of HD SC Setup by BabblingIdiot · · Score: 1

      touché

      wasn't there something you had to do with the Resource Editor to get it to recognize disks that didn't have Apple-branded firmware? maybe that's applicable here

  29. MultiFinder was in System 6 by tepples · · Score: 1

    System 7 was just an attempt to catch up to the rest of the computing world, which would let you put multiple applications side by side on a single display.

    Process Manager in System 7 was a refactor of MultiFinder, which was in System 6.

    The only other really cool MacOS feature wasn't even an OS feature, though it was made possible by MacOS 7's virtual memory support: Ram Doubler, aka compressed swap. This has only recently become a Linux kernel feature.

    I guess zram was waiting for the patent to run out.

    1. Re:MultiFinder was in System 6 by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Process Manager in System 7 was a refactor of MultiFinder, which was in System 6.

      In System 6, the Multifinder ran multiple full-screen applications, and let you switch between them more or less at will until the Multifinder crashed, which it did all the goddamned time. In System 7, all the applications shared a common backdrop, with the menu bar changing to reflect the application currently brought to the foreground, and the Finder still crashed all the goddamned time.

      I cut my teeth on the Mac Plus, and then my mother bought a IIci 5/80 with a 8*24 and a two-page mono, upon which she ran mostly Pagemaker. Much much later, I ran netbsd on it and put a cache card in it. I just sold a SE with a Radius accelerator, and am supposedly delivering it on Friday. It's running 6.0.something. I will also sell my last 68k machine soon, an Amiga 1200 with an accelerator. I think I've about had my fun with it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:MultiFinder was in System 6 by ejasons · · Score: 1

      In System 6, the Multifinder ran multiple full-screen applications, and let you switch between them more or less at will until the Multifinder crashed, which it did all the goddamned time. In System 7, all the applications shared a common backdrop, with the menu bar changing to reflect the application currently brought to the foreground, and the Finder still crashed all the goddamned time.

      You're thinking of Switcher, which was only available for a short time. Multifinder always allowed windows to be intermixed. For the fun of it, I actually run all of this (System6/Multifinder) in an emulator a few weeks ago.

    3. Re:MultiFinder was in System 6 by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Well, you must be right. I only had one app to even launch on my Mac sitting here, Word.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  30. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by AC-x · · Score: 2

    imac's dont have glued in screens at all

    Apple have been gluing the imac's screen since 2012.

  31. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    imac pro will not have that.

  32. Re:Apple only recognizes Apple stuff by Camembert · · Score: 1

    Chill. It looks like a bug that will likely be fixed in the next os patch.

  33. Re: no the hardware went thin for looks and disk s by HiThere · · Score: 1

    You might be able to come up with reasons why you prefer Apple, but the choice isn't objective. I happen to be perfectly satisfied with Linux. Well...that's not true, I'd prefer gnome2 over the KDE desktop I currently have, but Mate isn't as good....

    That's written as if it were an objective choice, but it isn't. I've got my preferred way of doing things, and that's my preference. Nothing says you should have the same preferences. I do happen to think that gnome3 is objectively worse than gnome2, but there are those that disagree with me. The choice of Mate vs KDE vs gnome2, however, is driven by personal choices. They all have flaws, but the ones in KDE bother *me* less.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  34. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by HiThere · · Score: 1

    I used both System 9 and OSX 10.1. OSX was dramatically better. I did keep the System 9 emulation package around because some things, like the tiff encoder, kept needing it. But honestly, I tried to avoid it as much as possible.

    That said, there may have been some ways in which System 9 was better than OSX, I'm just not familiar with any of them.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  35. Re:Once again... by HiThere · · Score: 1

    Pancreatic cancer is almost always untreatable by the time it is detected. It's probable that his choice of alternative medicine caused an early death, but likely he chose it because he was told that the standard treatment meant preparing to die, so he went after a long chance. (Admittedly, I don't know his personal beliefs, but I also don't trust the news reports that much. They are processed for entertainment value.)

    OTOH, it's quite difficult for someone even similar to him to pick a suitable replacement. I can't at the moment think of any historical example where that has happened. Certainly not at HP. IBM wasn't ever lead by someone of the same stripe, despite how Watson has been idolized in later times.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  36. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by Bongo · · Score: 1

    I seem to recall lots and lots of complaining about the loss of the spacial Finder. And Quark people all obsessed with their workflows.

    Funny at the time I'd been trying Linux on a Quadra 8500, and then installed Mac OS X 10.0 and never looked back.

    And it was also the time when Mac people were always complaining that Macs are so superior to PCs (I used Macs myself) but when I finally realised what a modern OS was like, I felt something of a mug -- Apple had seriously inflicted collective brain damage on its users in continuing with OS 9 for so long, whilst it fretted over whether this or that routine was reentrant or not.

    At least now I can say I prefer Unix to Windows.

  37. Re:and pro hardware (imac pro) you can't change di by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    imac pro will not have that.

    You are correct. I stand corrected. Although the cutaway graphics show what appear to be standard RAM sockets Inside; so maybe just not "easily upgradeable" RAM...

    We won't really know until iFixit gets out their heat-gun... ;-)

  38. There's menu option for that by Mittengrabber · · Score: 1

    Put a new Samsung 850 SSD in a 2010 iMac yesterday and came across this issue. Checking it just now, the option seems to be in the View menu, select Show All Devices. Show Only Volumes is the default and if selected a new drive (with no formatted volumes on it) will not show up. I can only hope that this default view gets changed in an update, on account of it being idiotic as it stands.

    1. Re:There's menu option for that by Mittengrabber · · Score: 1

      IN Disk Utility.

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  40. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

    OS X was one of the best things that ever happened to Apple. System 7 to OS 9 were preemptive multitasking, where if one program didn't call a WaitNextEvent(), the entire OS would freeze, necessitating a hard reset. In fact, one had to reboot their Mac every 2-3 hours because their OS was so unstable. These were Apple's dark ages, because all but really dedicated people left the Mac platform either because they could get more work done on Windows, or the fact that they could do some cool tinkering on Linux. If it were not for NeXTStep, Apple likely would not have survived, or if so, it would have been in some diminished capacity (like being bought out by Sun.)

    Apple can innovate, but historically, they tend to go into markets after the original pioneers have dealt with the slings and arrows. Had Apple stepped into the MP3 market any sooner, they would have to battle the RIAA on RIAA's turf, and the iPod would be a completely different offering, if it didn't get stomped out of existance. Diamond's Pyrrhic victory was a stepping stone for Apple to get into that market.

    It would be nice for Apple to get back into "bread and butter" computing. Apple used to be a one stop shop, where if one had an problem, they could call Apple to deal with everything from the printer, monitor, OS, hardware, and even the application. No finger pointing to vendors who point the finger right back. I know there would be a market if Apple would start selling "everyday" devices again. Things like a Time Capsule with two drives for RAID, a decent laser printer/scanner/copier, or a hardened server designed where IoT devices communicated with it, and it would allow/deny communication, as a way to keep remote attackers at bay, especially if it could use Z-wave.

    Apple could even make money by making their own removable media format for backups (perhaps licensing Sony's optical formats or high density tape formats) , and it would sell well.

  41. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

    OS X was one of the best things that ever happened to Apple. System 7 to OS 9 were preemptive multitasking, where if one program didn't call a WaitNextEvent(), the entire OS would freeze, necessitating a hard reset.

    That's not preemptive multitasking -- that's cooperative multitasking. OS X is preemptive.

    Yaz

  42. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

    I stand corrected. Meant cooperative multitasking... a quality of UNIX since bygone times. Thank you.

  43. Re:Apple has suffered a massive brain drain. by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

    Typo city. tl;dr Preemptive multitasking is what made OS X a major step for Apple, and a major improvement. Applications made from System 1-7 and macOS 8-9 had to be extremely well coded, or else they would take down the entire machine.