Hello kristeen,
I had an almost identical problem with 2 new 8 TB Western Digital EasyStore
drives during the past month on a Mac Mini running High Sierra. Like your 4
TB WD drive, it was formatted in NTFS from the factory, and as soon as we
selected the option to reformat the drive, we received numerous error
messages, including that the drive could not be formatted because there
wasn't enough disk space for the operation. We then ran First aid, and the
system reported that the drive was not mounted. We then attempted to remount
the drive, and this failed but I don't recall the error. Next we tried to
repartition the drive, and I think it reported that the drive was not
mounted. At this point, we concluded that perhaps the drive was actually
defective.
Before initially connecting the drive to the Mac Mini, I did connect it to a
Windows 7 computer to see how it was formatted, and Windows recognized the
drive and reported that it was formatted in NTFS. Following the problems
with the Mac, I reconnected the drive to Windows 7 again with the hope that
I could repartition-reformat the drive, but Windows would no longer load the
drive. I returned it to Best Buy for a new drive.
I was never really convinced that there was something truly wrong with the
first drive, and I thought that perhaps some important information was
popping up that I wasn't seeing with Voiceover since I am not an experienced
Mac user. For this reason, I waited to connect the second new drive to the
Mac Mini until a sighted friend with considerable Mac experience was
available. When we connected the second drive, all the same problems
happened as occurred with the first drive. Western Digital tech support was
not open since this was a Sunday, so I called Best Buy tech support instead.
Since it was time critical that this drive get installed for a project that
I am working on, and since I did not believe that either of the drives was
in fact defective, I paid $100 to get a Geek Squad expert to remotely log
onto my computer to fix the problem. After 30 minutes remotely experimenting
with my computer and WD drive, the Geek concluded that the drive was
defective.
While the Geek was engaged in his ultimately unsuccessful efforts, my friend
was searching the internet looking for solutions. When the Geek failed to
solve the problem, my friend followed the repair steps described in the
following article which involve going into the terminal mode on the Mac, and
in about 2 minutes the drive was visible on the Mac and successfully
formatting.
The link is as follows, and I am pasting text below the link. Please let us
know if this or something else works to get your drive functioning.
https://priyanksharma.com/tech/mediakit-reports-not-enough-space-on-device-for-requested-operation
MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation
Priyank Sharma Feb 12, 2017 Tech 243 Comments
What’s the cause?
This type of error is generally caused when your EFI partition is below 200
MB. Mac requires an EFI partition of at least 200 MB to perform any Disk
Utility function on an HDD. If your drive came factory formatted in NTFS,
chances are your EFI partition would be lesser as Windows can work with a
minimum of 100 MB.
What is EFI partition you ask? Well, the EFI system partition (ESP) is a
small partition formatted with FAT32, usually 100 MB, which stores the EFI
boot loaders for the installed system and applications used by the firmware
at startup.
So how to fix this?
Before we begin,
Warning
Please note that all data on the HDD will be lost. I do not take any
responsibility whatsoever in the unlikely event that your HDD gets bricked.
By following these instructions, you agree to take full responsibility for
the consequences.
Alright, now let’s fire up Terminal to get the name of the HDD you are
trying to fix. Type the command below to list down all drives. Look for the
label “external, physical” and note its Identifier. In my case it’s disk2.
Could be different for you.
diskutil list
Now let’s force unmount the disk (and all volumes on it) by typing in,
diskutil unmountDisk force disk2
And then write zeros to the boot sector by typing in,
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1024 count=1024
You will be asked to enter your administrator password. Go ahead and do it.
Note that entering a password in Terminal will cause your cursor not to
move. Your input will be accepted anyway.
Finally, let’s go ahead and partition it. Again, in my case it’s disk2.
Could be different for you. Type in,
diskutil partitionDisk disk2 GPT JHFS+ "Canvio" 0g
Where Canvio is what you want to name your HDD. This will also format your
drive and make it ready for use.
That’s it, you are done! Do share your feedback/experience in the comment
section below.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kristeen Hughes" <[email protected]>
To: "'Jason White' via MacVisionaries" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2018 7:17 AM
Subject: Problem with a new external drive
You folks have helped me out many times and I am very grateful. I don’t know
if anyone can help with this, but I have to try.
I have a new WD 4 TB USB drive I got yesterday. It is a My Passport drive.
When I plug it into any USB slot on my mini, the result is the same. It can
be seen in disk utilities, but not in finder. It shows 4 TB in size with 0
KB available. It can not be written too, or so disk utilities says. It will
not erase. It says it can be verified and repaired, but whenever I run first
aid on it, it says it fails because it is not mounted. The mount command
does nothing.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Kristeen
--
The following information is important for all members of the Mac
Visionaries list.
If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if
you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or
moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself.
Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at:
[email protected] and your owner is Cara Quinn - you
can reach Cara at [email protected]
The archives for this list can be searched at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries
list.
If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you
feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or
moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself.
Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at:
[email protected] and your owner is Cara Quinn - you
can reach Cara at [email protected]
The archives for this list can be searched at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
