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I have an SSD drive I bought some time ago for using in an old Mac laptop, replacing the slow, spining disk that was inside. Eventually I bought a new laptop and wanted to use this SSD with a case as an external drive. All worked well until one day I tried to format it (or convert it to APFS, or Encrypt it, I'm not sure exactly what happened). Anyway, something happened. No data was lost and I don't care about the data inside but I would like to be able to reuse the disk (after, it's a 1TB SSD).

As it is now:

  • I can decrypt it (it was a FileVault drive) and see its contents
  • Can't read any file
  • Can't write any file

Since then, I've tried everying: Disk Utility first aid, fdisk, format, erase, etc. Tried similar tools things both on macOS and Windows.

I used Crucial's tool that says the hard drive is in good condition so I still have hope.

When I try to erase the whole drive I get:

"Unable to write to the last block of the device."

Running Disk Utility's First Aid:

"The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.DiskManagement error -69874.)"

Running fsck_hfs searcing for bad blocks and dd to try and reset the whole drive I get:

"Resource busy" (which should be impossible since no drive is mounted)

I just wanna be able to format this and reuse it.

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  • Your SSD needs to be visible but offline, i.e. not in use by an OS. Have you tried to download Gparted (here: gparted.org), copy it onto a bootable USB stick, boot from it after plugging the SSD to your PC, and let Gparted wipe it entirely? I've done it countless times on external drives, but never on one that had been formatted on a Mac, so I can't guarantee it'll work. EDIT: once in Gparted, you can format it to your liking, of course. Wiping it doesn't mean "zeroing it out", just erasing the partition table.
    – user1019780
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 10:04
  • Try TestDisk.
    – harrymc
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 10:24
  • Very probably a bad SATA cable - apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136601/…
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 10:25
  • @Tetsujin that was my first guess but the cable is fine. Other disks work perfectly with the same enclosure.
    – lamelas
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 13:35
  • @harrymc testdisk is a fantastic tool but unfortunately it can't do anything about it.
    – lamelas
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 13:35

1 Answer 1

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f your SSD is write-protected, you will not be able to write any new information on it or change the information stored already.

To remove the write protection, you can use the Diskpart tool by following these steps:

Press the Win+R keys on your keyboard to open the Run box. Type diskpart -> press Enter to run it. Inside the diskpart environment -> type and run each of these commands by pressing Enter. Type list disk -> press Enter. Identify the SSD in the list -> type select disk X -> press Enter (where X is the name of your SSD).diskpart - SSD drive won't format/SSD format error occured at offset Run the command attributes disk clear readonly. Wait for the process to complete -> type Exit and press Enter to close Diskpart. Try formatting your SSD drive again.

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  • Tried this but no luck. :(
    – lamelas
    Commented Apr 1, 2020 at 13:38

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