Format/Wipe Apple USB Pen Drive "A1384 607-8240"

[dnaplusthree]

Hello All,
Does anyone know how to format the Apple USB Pen Drive "A1384 607-8240". It is the MBA Software Reinstall Drive that came with the MBA. I no longer use 10.6 and would like to put El Capitan/Sierra on the USB instead. Thanks,

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Hello All,
Does anyone know how to format the Apple USB Pen Drive "A1384 607-8240". It is the MBA Software Reinstall Drive that came with the MBA. I no longer use 10.6 and would like to put El Capitan/Sierra on the USB instead. Thanks,

Assuming it's not protected in some way from being written over:

Format an External Hard Drive or USB Flash Drive for Mac OS X

 

[dnaplusthree]

It is protected to prevent any accidental formatting. I'm intentionally wanting to wipe it. Any suggestions???

 

[ferrarr]

Sell it on ebay/Amazon and buy a new 8gb flash drive.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Sell it on ebay/Amazon and buy a new 8gb flash drive.

+1 to this. Thumb drives are cheap. Heck, the Apple-provided one may well be more valuable on eBay as-is than a replacement unformatted one in the same capacity.

 

[MBP17•David]

I quite like the look of that one, so converted both mine (well, my wife's) and my sister's MBA install drives to standard USB, and even did a proper icon for them (but then I have custom icons for all my drives and USB sticks):

Unfortunately, to remove the protection, you'd have to use Windows (virtual machine is fine).

I have a pdf file saved with step-by-step guide, but can't remember where from.

More than happy to email it to you - PM me

 

[chscag]

Mount the USB drive in Windows (as David indicated above) and then:

Using the traditional GUI of Disk Management doesn't give you the option to delete or reformat, so fire up the command line.

type DISKPART to enter the diskpart utility

at the prompt, enter list disk as below

DISKPART> list disk

take a look at the disk you want to reformat, and select it with the appropriate number, for example:

DISKPART> select disk 1

once selected, you can delete the GPT / EPI by the clean command:

DISKPART> clean

once done, you can then proceed to format the disk the traditional way through disk management and selecting FAT32 or NTFS. Or mount the drive with your Mac and use Disk Utility to format it as HFS+.

Worked for me before - if you can follow the above instructions.

 

[MBP17•David]

This is a quicker way, and I much prefer CLI - saved! Thanks

The one I used before involved some proprietary software, no doubt just a GUI shell of the above.

 

[Slydude]

@Chalie I can't begin to describe my disappointment. A certain Canadian member, and we know of whom I speak, has only been back a few days and he has enlisted you in the conspiracy to get the entire Mac world using the CLI.