I often buy external Hard Disk Drives that are built for PC like in it in the case of Seagate and some Western Digital drives. Normally, when you're using a Mac and you insert a drive the Disk Utility tool will allow you to reformat a drive however you'd like!

But when I wanted more disk space for all the content I've been creating and filming, I decided to buy an 8TB HDD drive, a Seagate I think, for about $200 on Amazon!

When it arrived I tried to install it to use it as a backup drive but my iMac didn't recognize it, neither did my Macbook Pro, so I went to the interwebs to try to find a solution.

After trying everything I could find, I decided to return it and exchange it for a new one since mine must be broken!

I got credit and bought another Seagate but a different model and still no luck so I had to dig deeper.

When trying to reformat it, it kept showing me the same error, so I searched how I could fix that and found this post by Priyank Sharma!

So now, every time I get a new Seagate, Western Digital, or any drive that my Apple computer doesn't want to recognize I go straight for these steps:

THE ERROR MESSAGE

MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation.

HOW TO FIX IT

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.

1. Alright, now let’s open up Terminal to get the name of the HDD you are trying to fix.

2. Type the command below to list down all drives.

diskutil list

3. Look for the label “external, physical” and note its Identifier. In my case it’s disk2. It's probably something different for you.

diskutil list