Applications :: Disk Utility Won't Format Or Partition External Hard Drive
Apr 18, 2010
The hard drive is a 1TB Western Digital my book I bought it in January I think. I tried to format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when I got it but for some reason every time I try to erase the part thats named disk3s2 or partition the main one it stops a little before half way through. I don't think its the hard drives fault so I called apple about it one day and they helped a little but it didn't work. Thanks in advance if you can help me. Also a few times I waited about seven hours for it while I was at school and when I came home it didn't move.
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Jan 7, 2011
I have an external 750GB hard drive that I previously formatted as FAT 32 because I wanted to be able to plug it into Windows computers as well. I was not very thoughtful at the beginning and I just created one big 750GB partition. I currently have 450GB used and about 300GB free.
I would like to create a new partition in the free space without losing the data I have in the disk, and format the new partition as Mac OS Extended to use it for Time Machine backups. Presumably Disk Utility can do it, but when I go to the "Partition" tab it says "This partition cannot be modified" and the "+" sign below it is grayed.
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Jan 29, 2010
I have a 1/3 full external drive that is currently formatted for MAC OS External.
I want to partition the drive in half and use the 2nd partition for Windows FAT32.
However, when I try to do this with Disk Utility it does not give me the FAT32 option.
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Apr 24, 2012
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research. I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper!
Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'. And it needs to be reformatted. It's become a read only disk. When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question. I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969! These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years.
I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure. Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state! Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive? And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Sep 2, 2014
I've been running a Toshiba 1TB external drive on my Mac Pro tower and it's been working fine. But yesterday it wouldn't mount. I could see the drive in Disc Utility, but the partition wouldn't mount. I brought it into work where I'm running an iMac and it mounted just fine. Why would it stop working on one computer (where it was previously fine) yet work okay on another? And how do I get it working on the tower?
Info:
Mac Pro, iOS 7.1.2
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Nov 5, 2009
I'm running Snow Leopard on my new Macbook Pro. I've got a 1.5TB External hard drive that I'm trying to figure out how to format in HFS+ with Apple Partition Map. I can figure out how to format in HFS using Disk Utility, however it still does it in GUID format and I do not know how to do it in Apple Partition Map.
Googleing this for hours has lead with all kinds of information on how to go to GUID FROM Apple Partition Map but not the other way around. I know GUID is the new hottness.. but this drive will be used exclusively to connect to my XBOX 360 and it supposedly only reads HFS+ when its formatted with Apple Partition Map. (I have tried it with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID, and the XBOX does NOT recognize it) I do not want to use Fat 32, (I know that that is the other major option) beacuse it limits file size.
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Sep 12, 2014
I have partitioned my external Hard drive into three different partitions, each of different formats. Two partitions for backing up my macbooks and one to copy to and from my windows PC. I would just like to know if in any way is it possible for me to be able to re-partition one of the partitions, without affecting my Time machine partitions, in case the need be in future.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Jul 23, 2010
I'm selling a hard drive that doesn't work when formatted for Mac so I need to sell it PC format. Will MS-DOS (FAT) work, and does it need to be set to Master Boot Record?
I have a PC I can test it on but I just want to now what to do before I try it out so I don't keep having to switch between computers.
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Nov 12, 2009
I was making a partition on my USB external drive in order to put a disk image of Snow Leopard on it, so I could boot off of it.
I added a 10GB partition to the drive, and clicked Apply. The following dialogue box came up:
Partitioning this disk will change some of the volumes. No volumes will be erased.
This volume will be added:
"Snow Leopard"
This volume will be resized:
"XXX HDD"
I clicked Partition, and it finished very quickly. I checked Finder, and the entire drive, BOTH partitions are completely empty.
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Aug 25, 2014
I wish to change partition scheme, sizes, in an external drive. All the partitions are MacOS extended (Journaled) and they map, according to the layout in Disk Utility, as follows: Partion 1, 2, 3,4 where 1 is at the top and 4, the bottom. I want to make partition 2 larger, so I decreased partition 1 by half. Now the layout is 1 a, 1b, 2,3,4., where 1b is now free space. Disk Utility will not allow me to increase the size of partition 2 by dragging the corner. Which of the following options (if any) will allow me to increase the size of partition 2, without erasing the data, using Disk Utility:Select partition 2 and manually writing a new value in the size box, equal to the present partition’s size plus the free space?If I delete partition 1 completely, will I then be able to increase the size of partition 2?If I delete partitions 1, 3, and 4, will I then be allowed to increase the size of partion 2?Is there another option?
(Actually, partition 3 is an eDrive, a data recovery utility created by TechTool Pro 7, so I don’t really know how it’s formatted.)
SeagateHD 1.5TB USB drive.
Info:
Time Capsule 802.11n (2nd Gen), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), MacBook Pro, iBook Dual USB
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Apr 28, 2010
I have a Lacie 1TB external drive. I'm trying to create another partition on it using Disk Utility so that I can use one of the partitions for Time Machine. When I go to add another partition, or even just resize the existing one, I get an error saying drive must be HPFS+ with Journaling enabled. It is. I've seen reference to this error in searches, but have not found a solution. Is there a fix for this, or another tool that I can use to re-partition my drive without wiping out existing partition? I have about 450GB worth of data on the drive that I might be able to store somewhere else temporarily, I would just prefer not to have to go through that....
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Oct 9, 2010
I had windows vista installed but suddenly the audio decided to become faulty, after spending a day trying to fix it i realized I have a windows 7 install disc so i might as well just replace vista with windows 7. I didnt take care of vista or ever register it so it became quite a task to upgrade so i just deleted the partition and went to create a new one and just do a full install of windows 7.
I made the partition but the wrong format, so i removed it through boot camp assistant and created another, except now it keeps giving me the "back up the disk and use disk utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using boot camp assistant again" Now, I'd love to do this, except I have no idea what I'm doing and WHY this error has occured. After becoming frustrated I switched from my imac to my macbook pro and received the same error when trying to create a partition. So any help on exactly what I need to do would be a HUGE help. I only use windows for music production (I know, seems backwards, but I use Sony Acid and FL Studio so I'm stuck with Windows)
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Nov 2, 2010
i'd like to format my lacie external hard drive with two partitions:
1. HFS+ partition as a bootable clone of my internal drive
2. FAT32 partition readable by any windows (and mac) machine
i'm creating my partitions with disk utility, but i hit a snag when choosing a partition scheme...apparently i cannot choose a different scheme for each partition.
so when i format the drive with GUID, the FAT32 partition is not even recognized by windows XP. but when i format the drive with master boot record (MBR), the HFS+ partition is not bootable...
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Mar 24, 2009
I'm trying to use my 500 GB external HD as solely a storage drive now whereas it used to be storage and backup, with separate partitions for each. I have deleted the backup partition (the first partition) successfully with Disk Utility, but how can I resize the remaining partition into the free space before it on the disk? I can't drag it or enter the desired size in the text box, it doesn't seem to want to get any larger. Is there any way to do this without purchasing ipartition? I have an old version from Tiger, but I'm not sure if that will work safely on leopard, and I do not want to lose my rather larger collection of ripped dvds on this external drive. Here's a screen shot of what i now see in disk utility.
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Jun 27, 2014
I have a Seagate 1 TB Backup Plus Drive which was working perfectly fine until I plugged it into a USB hub. It detected it while in the hub and I was able to get files off of it, but when I ejected it from the hub and put it back into the USB slot on the computer it was not detected by finder. It shows up in the disk utility and I clicked verify and repair and it says:
Verify and Repair volume “Seagate Backup Plus Drive”
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Is there any way to get this to work properly again? Or if not is there a way for me to recover my files on the external hard drive?
I have a Macbook PRO late 2011 running OS X Mavericks.
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Feb 5, 2009
I noticed in disc utility that under the erase tab it has the option to format a drive to fat32. If I create a windows partition using bootcamp and then go into disk utility and erase to fat32 will this allow a boot into the xp drive? My xp disc keeps restarting before it gives me the opportunity to format the drive to either a ntfs or a fat so I need a way around this?
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Jun 3, 2014
Disk Utility Crashed whilst creating a Partition, and I now have ~100GB missing, which was the amount I had allocated to the new partition.
The new partition didn't get created, and I now have 100GB missing from the Hard drive. I have a 1TB hard drive, and when I go to Disk Utility, it says: Capacity : 999.35 GB (999,345,127,424 Bytes)Available : 586.1 GB (586,103,844,864 Bytes)Used : 310.52 GB (310,524,317,696 Bytes)
Which adds up to about ~900GB.
I tried Repairing Disk in Disk Utility, booting into Recovery Mode and Repairing Disk there, but neither made a difference.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
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Oct 17, 2010
I have an external hard drive that was used on a PC. I want to use it on a Mac. I went into disk utility and did an erase. (Extended Journaled and in security options changed it to zero out data). I can now use it on the Mac how ever it is telling me that there is 54.1 MB of used space. I want to have access to this. How do I do it?
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Aug 29, 2014
I've recently converted to the Mac-side:
I'm having difficulty with my external hard-drive, here's the info on that one:
Disk Utility won't allow me to mount the drive, I've tried using a number of softwares to read it (working under the assumption that it's an NTFS drive), including Tuxera and Paragon. I have too much stored on the hard drive to empty it back onto my old computer, and so I'm not able order to re-format it.
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Mar 24, 2009
I received an Acomdata 2Tb external hard drive today from Amazon and plugged it in. Time Machine popped up and I declined to link the hard drive to it. I went into Disk Utility and chose the new hard drive on the left column and went to erase. I chose Mac OS Extended. I named it and hit erase. It started going, and going..... and going... and a half an hour later I knew something was wrong.
Disk Utility was not responding and I eventually had to Force Quit. Now I cannot format the hard drive. I starts and then it stops with a disk error. I tried to run the First Aid verify and repair and both stopped after a few seconds with an error. What do I do?
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Dec 23, 2007
Will running the 'repair disk' disk utility on an external drive screw up any of the files on my external hard drive? I only want to run it because I can't transfer a file from my HD to the external...it's a 6 gig video file in quicktime format, and I'm getting 'error 1309', which I understand is related to file size on FAT32 format. I know it's a huge file, but I've moved others to the external that are over 20 gigs with no problems (iMovie projects, etc). Anything I can do to get this file moved to the external?
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Jun 10, 2012
I had downloaded some files to add to an external hard drive, the hard drive was assigned to a pc before adding these files so it wouldn't let me add files from my MacBook..
Had a look around online and made some changes (well thats what I thought) and I was able to transfer files form my MacBook onto the external hard drive.
What I then figured out was that there was nothing left on the hard drive except for the two file sI just transferred..
It turns out I deleted everyting without noticing.
The stpes I followed was to go to disk utility then select the hard drive and click erase (not knowing this would erase evrything).
So now I have two files on my hard drive and no idea how to recover the 'delted' files.
I tried using Disk Drill, which found the files but then it said I need to buy the full version to recover them.
I am wondering if there is any free methods to recover these files at all
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011)
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May 21, 2009
I'm trying to format my external harddrive with disk utility to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but it keeps coming up with this error.
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Sep 7, 2009
Anyone knows why my external HD (USB disk connected to Airport extreme) does not show up in disk utility? (It sits on my desktop just fine and is fully functional) I' want to erase a partition but now i don't know how.
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Mar 26, 2009
Despite the dire warnings about the Seagate drives that I read all over the place, I decided to buy this drive. Dell had a great price of $129 with free shipping.
It is going to supplement existing storage capabilities as a secondary backup so I'm covered if the drive does experience any of the problems that others have experienced. So far the drive is running great. I have copied nearly 800GB of data to it with no issues. I have the drive connected to an AEBS. I have been able to stream movies from the drive with no problems. It looks like Seagate has resolved the firmware issues that have plagued the drive in the past.
My only issue was that it was a bit of a pain to reformat the drive. For some reason disk utility would not format the drive until I created and then deleted two partitions.
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Aug 19, 2009
I've got an external drive (320GB) that I'm trying to format as FAT32 using Disk Utility, then create a large (as in, most of the drive) HFS partition.
The problem is that no matter what I do, it will only format the drive as Mac Journaled. It lets me select other options (Mac, FAT32) and goes through the process with no errors or warnings, but when I click on the drive it remains Journaled with a partition of whatever I just selected.
I am sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am selecting the drive itself, not the partition, when formatting. This is extremely frustrating. Google searches aren't turning up any clues and I don't know what to do.
I have other external drives formatted as FAT32 with a large Mac partition so I know it's possible.
I need to do this so I can mount the drive on a Windows machine.
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Aug 22, 2014
I've got a Transcend 8GB usb drive and i want to erase everything on it but i can't. I know that the best way to do this is the Disk Utility (Because Finder can't erase them too. When I drag and drop to the bin, it says "43 files cannot be deleted")
When i attempt to format, this message appears from disk utility: and also, another message appears at the same time.I just wanted to format my disk. But i can still see the content in the disk. But can't copy them to desktop.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), iMac G5 from 2005, but it's intel.
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Dec 17, 2010
I try to securely erase big hard drive and Disk Utility in Tiger says Secure Erase. Pass 1 of 7. Estimated time 123 hours
Is this progress bar only for erase 1/7 or for all 7 passes (1-7/7)?
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Jul 18, 2010
I deleted my Boot Camp partition in Disk Utility (as usual, Windows wasn't working and wouldn't fix). I resized my Macintosh HD partition to cover the whole drive and repartitioned. Now Disk Utility says that the partition's capacity is 160 GB and that I've used 40 GB and that 70 GB is available. My Boot Camp partition was 50 GB. I've read that to fix it I have to boot from my install DVD, go to Disk Utility, set the number of partitions to one, and delete the entire drive so that there's zero data left. Then I'd reinstall OS X and restore from a Time Machine backup. As of now, I have no external hard drive.
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Mar 31, 2009
I've been backing up my Powerbook G4 for a few months using Time Machine to an external firewire drive with two partitions; one for the backups, and a much larger one for all my music, video, pictures, etc. I got a new mac mini over the weekend and I want to format the Time Machine partition without erasing the one with all my other files so I can start backing up the Mini.
Is this possible using Disk Utility? If so, how?
Both computers are running Leopard.
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