Fix SDCards and disks #

Last updated March 16, 2026
macos

Sometimes you need to reformat a disk and DiskUtility isn't cutting it. I had a recent case of an SD card I'd used to install Linux. Disk Utility could see the drive but not read the linux partitions nor erase the partitions to turn it back into a plain MS-Dos (FAT) drive. The key is to use diskutil, the command line counterpart.

List the partitions

diskutil list

Find the id for the disk you are erasing. disk4 in my case.

diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 RASPBIAN MBRFormat disk4