Hi,
I just picked up a Samsung 2TB T7 SSD. I want to partition it with 2 partitions, 1 for CCC backup and 1 to use as an external Bootcamp partition.
My host is a 2020 iMac running Catalina 10.15.7.
I attempted to partition the SSD identically to my internal drive:
GUID Partition Map
Partition 1: APFS Container
Partition 2: exFat (reformatted to NTFS by Winclone when restoring)
The exFat partition on the internal drive returns 4096 Bytes for the Device Block Size
The exFat partition on the SSD returns 512 Bytes for the Device Block Size and 4096 Bytes for the Allocation Block Size.
Winclone will not allow Block-based operations with this reported mismatch in Device Block Size. WIM is much slower and without block-based operations, volume-to-volume actions are not allowed.
I’ve tried a number of things and done a fair bit of Google searching to see if there’s an obvious way to format the bootcamp partition on the SSD so that it returns 4096 Bytes for the device block size. I’ve had no success.
I’ve tried using newfs_exFat in the terminal, but I’ve not been able to get the desired result
I’ve tried using a Windows machine to format the partition directly as NTFS, but I can’t get the Device Block Size set at 4096 Bytes.
I’ve looked for 3rd party partitioning tools for the Mac, but most don’t seem to handle APFS.
I’m hoping that others have had success here or have some suggestions on other things to try.