background image

Technical 

Notes

TouchMix Digital Mixers

Disc formatting in Apple El Capitan OS

Overview

Apple has made changes to the disc utility within the El Capitan (10.11) operating system that have affected the 
FAT32 format process.

When formatting a hard drive with the Disc utility on a Mac running the El Capitan OS, you will need to select the 

MSDOS format option, which is how Mac classifies FAT32. In the MS-DOS option, El Capitan has added a sepa-
rate “Partition” selection that offers the options GUID or MBR (Master Boot Record). 

• 

Do not select GUID for use with a TouchMix mixer because it creates a separate smaller partition that the 
mixer will see as the primary partition; in a recording session, the mixer would use that partition and conse-

quently run out of space within only a minute or two, causing the recording to stop. Also, if you use the drive 

to update the mixer’s firmware, the mixer would be unable to find the update file.

• 

Instead, select MBR (Master Boot Record) because 

it will format the drive as one single partition. The 

procedure details follow below.

Recommended formatting procedure

1. 

Connect the external hard drive to your computer 

and launch the Disc Utility.

2. 

In the Disk Utility left column, select the drive (see 

Figure 1).

4 March 2016

Figure 1

Reviews: