I have a new 8TB My Book that Disk Utility (DU) tried to format. The drive now shows it as Mac OS Extended but has a crazy name “disk4s1” and is grayed out meaning it’s not mounted, nor will DU mount it. It also shows capacity as “8 TB” but available as “Zero KB.” Quitting DU and reopening it changes nothing, same for unplugging and re-plugging in the HD. It appears to be an unusable drive.
Hi vjspin3,
You can have a look on below mentioned KBA to reformat the drive and make sure to check the macOS version before following the steps.
Note: Formatting is a data destructive process and can’t be undone.
This appears to be an issue with the High Sierra version of Disk Utility, as I had the same issue with a friend’s Seagate drive. Seagate’s utility was not able to resurrect it, so I’m still dealing with that. I’ll take your utility over and try using that. Got nothing to lose as I still haven’t heard from Apple.
Yours I was able to resurrect by using your included WD Utility (which I had copied to my computer). Then Disk Utility was able to properly format it for use as Time Machine drive.
Thank you very much for your quick reply. I’ve never had an issue with any of my WD drives over many years (40?). Not something many companies can brag about.
V J
