[SOLVED] Can't format Mac USB disk

[joneall]

I have an external USB disk called "My passport for Mac". There is a 2TB xfat partition on it which I want to delete. When I mount the disk, I get

$ sudo mount /dev/sdd mnt-tmp/
FUSE exfat 1.2.8
ERROR: invalid VBR checksum 0x0 (expected 0x8d27c8aa).

I don't understand the FUSE bit, even after looking it up. The error is probably because I used gdisk to try to delete the partition. Gparted does'nt permit deletion.

A disk is a disk, as far as I know, so why can't I physically manipulate it? Do I have to use a Mac to do it? Quelle horreur!

TIA.

[Don B. Cilly]

Gparted does'nt permit deletion.

Of what?

[joneall]

Of a partition. "Delete" is grayed out both on the top row of gparted and in the right-click context menu.

The partition is not mounted.

[Don B. Cilly]

Hmm. I only get it "greyed out" on unallocated space (well, obviously) or on swap partitions, on which I have to use "swapoff" and then it "ungreys".
Does your right-click menu give you any options similar to "swapoff"?
I really don't know anything about exfat.

Or you could try Device, Create partition table...

[joneall]

Or you could try Device, Create partition table...

That did it! I picked a gpt type of partition table. Don't know if that's the best choice for an external USB disk. Probably not necessary, as it will never contain more than one or two partitions.

Thanks a lot!

[joneall]

Now I have a partition, but whether I make it "msdos" (I suppose, MRB) or gpt, it won't let me write an exfat partition. What am I missing?

[Don B. Cilly]

Apparently KDE's partition manager will let you format to exfat.

[claydoh]

I'll bet that you need the exfat-utils package, which is what provides the support for exfat partitioning etc. . This is not installed by default usually, KDE's partition manager will complain about missing support, no idea if Gparted does.

[joneall]

I did not know about the KDE partition manager. Now I have installed it and that did the job.

Many thanks.

[sithlord48]

A little late but hopefully useful to any future viewers there are two other file systems used by apple that you will need to install packages to use.

HFS+:
hfsplus - Mounting HFS+ Partitions
hfsprogs - Create HFS Formated Partitions

APFS:
libfsapfs1 and libfsapfs-utils To Mount APFS Partitions