Creating an external Boot Drive

[Howard Brazee]

I bought a LaCie Rugged USB-C Media at the Apple Store. I want it to be a boot drive on my M1 iMac. In other instructions I have seen, I should erase it as APFS with "GUID Partition Map" as the Scheme.
But this drive only gives the formats of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)", FAT, or ExFAT. The Scheme can be "GUID Partition Map", "Master Boot Record", or "Apple Partition Map".

Why doesn't this drive give me the"APFS" format?

 

[TonyAguila]

I bought a LaCie Rugged USB-C Media at the Apple Store. I want it to be a boot drive on my M1 iMac. In other instructions I have seen, I should erase it as APFS with "GUID Partition Map" as the Scheme.
But this drive only gives the formats of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)", FAT, or ExFAT. The Scheme can be "GUID Partition Map", "Master Boot Record", or "Apple Partition Map".

Why doesn't this drive give me the"APFS" format?

I assume you are using Disk Utility to format the drive. If not yet selected, choose Show All Devices in the View dropdown. Then select the device for the drive (topmost line). Then click on Erase on the toolbar. It should now show you the option for APFS.

If this doesn’t happen, I suggest you return the drive to Apple. I have had so much problems with LaCie drives over the years that I have been warning all my clients to avoid it at all cost. Next time you opt for an external boot drive, I suggest putting together your own Thunderbolt SSD drive, or at least a Thunderbolt hard drive.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I discovered my problem. I looked at the drop-down menu for "Format" while the drop-down menu for "Scheme" was set to "Master Boot Record". Apparently, I need to change the "Scheme" drop-down menu first. That changed the options available in the Format drop-down.