If so, you can safely ignore that message. You may get a message that the APFS container was damaged. diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk2s3 Deleting the APFS partition Running diskutil list gives us our APFS device identifierįinally, issue this command in Terminal to delete the APFS container and its volume, replacing disk2s3 with your actual device identifier. Make note of the device on your external drive (in my case, disk2). Now, launch Terminal and issue this command: diskutil list Use Disk Utility to eject your APFS container First, use Disk Utility to eject your APFS container. Here’s what you need to do in order to go about deleting your APFS partition correctly. This means you can’t merge the partition back into the other partitions on your external hard drive. The same thing happens if you use diskutil the wrong way. If you use Disk Utility to erase an APFS volume and format it HFS+, you’ll find that the old APFS container sticks around. A diskutil list, showing the APFS Container scheme. Below that, /dev/disk3 is the APFS container, and /dev/disk3s1 is the APFS volume. You can see disk2s2 in the screenshot below, the partition on my external hard drive hosting the APFS Container. In the Terminal, running diskutil list will reveal this in even starker contrast. Because of this, you’ll see an APFS Container and your volumes in Disk Utility, separate from the physical drive the container is located on.

Each container can export one or more volumes, the actual “drives” you see in Finder. This is the base storage unit for APFS, and it’s managed differently from older file systems. What’s With the Hassle?īecause of the way APFS is designed, we now have something called a container. The current way APFS is implemented, there’s a specific set of steps you need to take when you want to delete your APFS partition. What happens when you’re finished playing with the new file system and want to reclaim that space? It’s not as easy as just erasing the volume in Disk Utility, unfortunately. So, you’ve spent some time experimenting with Apple File System (APFS).

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