How do I format a 30TB SSD external drive on MacBook Air?

davehouto wrote:

I've recently bought a new 30TB SSD extrenal drive for my MacBook.

30 TB: On a single SSD?

ArsTechnica (August 26, 2022) – Walmart lists a 30TB portable SSD for $39. It is, naturally, a scam (But the "30TB" disk does at least try to fool users in clever ways.)

Reddit – This can't be legit, can it? Portable 30 TB SSD for $90, yeah right.

usb 3.1 ssd 30 tb support on m1 mac mini … - Apple Community (if you read the thread, the replies are to the effect that such drives are total scams, and that there are hundreds of articles about these scams)

I've started disk utility and also terminal and have been unable to format it. I get a series of errors when trying. Running 'First Aid' it seems ok but no matter what I do I get an error. Please help.

Disk Utility is very likely accessing a scam drive in ways that expose the scam.

The fix is to return the scam drive and get your money back – if you can. In any event, you should not entrust your data to it.

Look on the drive packaging to see if it tells you if it was pre-formatted as NTFS, or if previously used, was it formatted for a Linux partition type (ext3, ext4, Btrfs, etc) or other obscure operating system filesystem. Apple's Disk Utility cannot handle any of those partition formats and the drive would present as unreadable.

Not true. No size limits with Mac that I have heard of.