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Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong. I want to format and encrypt a new SanDisk flash drive on my Mac that uses OS Sierra 10.12.6. This is what I have done:

  1. Opened Disk Utility and clicked onto the drive and selected erase.
  2. Given a name, selected GUID and Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) (because I want to be able to read it in Windows)
  3. Clicked erase, entered a password and verified.
  4. It goes through the process and then a message comes up telling me it has failed. The drive vanishes from the screen and never shows again. I have even shut down and restarted but the flash drive is dead. This has happened twice and I do not want any more unusable flash drives.
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    Is the drive visible in Disk Utility?
    – pion
    Dec 23, 2021 at 6:25
  • Have you tested to see if they're the size they claim to be & not fakes? If you have spares, use one in the format it arrived, don't reformat it. Drop large files, movies etc to it, something just under 4GB each. See if you can get as many as maths would say, or if it fails first. Or download the Fight Flash Fraud app F3X [which I think still works under High Sierra[
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 23, 2021 at 7:48
  • Disks formatted macOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) cannot be read natively by a Windows machine. Are you using Windows software (like HFSExplorer, Mediafour MacDrive, or Paragon HFS+) which allows you to open HFS+ volumes? You should format using ExFAT for Windows compatibility once you've figured out the drive disappearance problem.
    – IconDaemon
    Dec 23, 2021 at 14:59
  • Thanks for the reply. Only one drive was visible in Disk Utility. I reformatted it using GUID and ExFat. I loaded the disk with one folder, right clicked to encrypt and the message that came up said "The given file system is not supported on Core Storage". I don't know what that means.
    – Lis Cumine
    Dec 26, 2021 at 3:38
  • I still don't understand what you're trying to do. You say you want this disk to be readable on Windows… yet Windows cannot decrypt FileVault encrypted disks, not even with HFS support software. FileVault will only work on 'Mac formatted' disks, HFS+ or APFS, not FAT ExFAT or ExtFS. This is all, however, beyond your initial issue.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 26, 2021 at 9:41

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