I have a WD external drive that was set up as my time machine backup disc with Leopard. I want to erase the disc, but when I try to erase it using disc utility, it tells me "Disk Erase failed with the error: Unable to write to the last block of the device".
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iMac, Related to an external drive
In the effort to use Time Machine, I want to partition my external drive. I have 500 gig external, and would like to have one partition of 480 and one around 20. This way, Time Machine will only back up onto the smaller partition, not endlessly backing up until all 500 gigs are used. The reason I need to partition without erasing is my 170 gig iTunes library. Its too large to transfer to my internal HD, and I have no other drive to store it on.
View 20 Replies View RelatedSince I activated FileVault 2 on my Mac boot drive without initializing it, I'd assume that the same thing could be done for any other drive. I've got some external drives with hundreds of GB of data which I'd like to encrypt. Disk Utility lets do it by erasing the drive and encrypting the data written afterwards.
Is there any hidden feature that allows one to convert the drive without erasing it first, like the FileVault utility did for the boot drive (even when working on it!)?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I have an external hard drive that I was previously using on PC, having attempted to use it on a Mac, it will not write to it. I've found that I have to format to FAT32, which I think i can just about manage (yes, im a girl) but my concern is, if i format through the MAC, will i then lose what's on the hard disk as the tab says 'erase'? I have a lot of images on the hard disk so am a little petrified! Any advice for this really basic question would be appreciated!
View 7 Replies View RelatedI shut off my iMac the other day and now when it boots I get a start up bar that looks like on my iPhone when uploading new os. And then it gets half way and starts over. It seems that my hard drive has an issue. I tried booting from snow leopard DVD. But I can't remember how to install a new system folder without erasing the drive. I tried making a bootable DVD of tech tool pro on a friends windows machine but it doesn't seem to work.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 4GB ram. 3.06Ghz Core 2 Duo
My hard drive currently has 2 partitions, one for time machine and the other for everything else. I would like to repartition so that I can have 3 partitions but without erasing everything. Is this possible?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have an External 1 TB HDD where 250 GB of it is dedicated to Time Machine back-ups. I only have about 25 GB of space left but Time Machine won't update .. says there's not enough space. I thought that TM auto-deletes the oldest entry? Well it's not working. What should I do? Do I need to do into Disk Utility and just highlight my TM Partition and erase it then start over? There's nothing on it that I need.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have royally screwed up! I want to erase the hard drive on my Power Mac G4 to prepare it to go to my son. I thought I was doing it right, but had forgotten to put the energy saver on "never turn off" so the screen dims when I try to continue with the erasing. Tried to start over with an install disk in the tray. Now can't access the original disk.
View 14 Replies View RelatedI follow the instruction to erase the hard disk and format my new imac os lion but i found some problem when i deleting the hard disk.I follow all the intrustion came to the DU part, click erase on top, select the hard disk thn click erase, but it show that erase fail " unmount disk" what does it mean?
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iMac
Im really close, well just about done on selling my powerbook and I want to erase my HD so I can give it to the buyer by "factory settings", especially by erasing all my keychain passwords.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI was doing a 7-Pass Erase of a hard drive that I had switched out of my MBP. During the process, the USB cable connecting my hard drive to my MBP got disconnected. Now, whenever I connect this external drive to my MBP, it doesn't show up in the desktop or under disk utiltiy. How can I can continue the process of erasing and formatting the drive? What do I have to do in order for OS X to recognize it?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a 2007 white MacBook that I am going to be selling. I want to erase the hard drive. I have gone into utilities but it won't let me erase the h ard drive completely.
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iPad, iOS 5.0.1
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.
I recently had to erase my hard drive because it failed and my computer wouldn't start up. When I try to reinstall Mavericks it just goes back to disk utility and I still can't start up my computer.
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iMac
I have an old iBook that I just want to completely wipe clean and install windows XP on (I know...blaspheme). Before people start questioning why I would do such a thing...it's only because I need the laptop for DJing in which I have an external sound card that only works with Windows. The main problem is that the CD drive doesn't work so I am uncertain how to go about erasing my hard drive and installing XP via USB.
View 1 Replies View Relatedso I got OS X Leopard. I had a copy of Windows Vista, and decided to try out the Boot Camp Assistant. Didn't have a problem partitioning the drives and installing Windows. However, I now find it entirely pointless to have Windows on my Mac being that I have a PC now. I tried doing it myself at first, and ended up erasing the Windows partition, and now I'm having troubles combining the drives into one. I saw something about running an uninstaller through the Boot Camp Assistant, but I think erasing the Windows partition ruined that for me. Whenever I try to use the BCA while the drive is mounted I get this error message: The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows. When I unmount the Windows partition, I get THIS error message: Boot Camp Assistant cannot be used. This startup disk is not supported.
View 2 Replies View RelatedWhy is my mouse leaving and erasing a trail on my screen, happend since I downloaded Iclowd
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
After backing up my data and then swiping my hard drive using Disk Utility, my OS seems to have been uninstalled as well. Is there a way to recover the deleted information and go back to the last working configuration? I'm on a MBP IC2D 2.16 w/ Lion.
View 3 Replies View RelatedAfter deleting about 500 emails and going to erase deleted messages the memory available on my hard drive did not change. Should it? Do emails not take up any memory?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a mid-2011 iMac (with Mavericks OS), and am doing a clean install before giving my computer to a relative. I performed a secure erase of my entire harddrive (using disk utility), reset the NVRAM / PRAM (but it only chimes once even after I tried several times), and now I get the grey screen even when I try to boot from CD, safe boot, or any other commands. I can't even get back into the disk utility.
On a side note, I have the install DVD in the DVD drive and I can't get that out.
Info:
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
My internal 1TB hard drive on my iMac is dead and I don't have the money to replace it at the moment. I have everything backed up on an external 1TB drive using Time Machine. As a workaround for the time being,Is there any way I can install the system on the external drive and use that as the boot drive without erasing the Time Machine Backups? It seems to me I would have to have two partitions for the external drive, one for the system, and one for Time Machine. But is there any way to add a partition without erasing the existing one with Time Machine only on it?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI was using Mail I have set up my email again, so I don't want to lose anything currently in my inbox, but want to retrieve old messages and addresses. Running 10.6.8 OS.
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iMac (27-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
OS X 10.4.3 IMAC Intel Core Duo. I backed up my HD on an external drive so I could upgrade to Snow Leopard. I wanted to test that I could boot from the external drive and selected it as my start up drive. When I did a restart I got the Apple and the turning gear and then suddenly a black screen with this on it:
"May 28 22:23:11 Launched:com.apple.nibindd:respawning too quickly throttling, exited system abnormally bad system call too many failures in succession I have no name!"
I tried several dozen times with no luck. I think when I made the copy of my HD on the external HD I may have neglected to make it "bootable" (moving too quickly). My internal CDROM is busted so I use an external CDROM. I can't boot from it at all with the proper start up buttons pushed. It keeps trying to boot from the external drive. If I turn the external drive off and try to boot from the external CD I just get the grey file with the ? in the middle of it.
I tried using another external HD I have with OS 10.4 on it, but it won't recognize it either with fan, alt, shift, delete pressed at start up. My internal drive (a Seagate 2 tarabite drive) works great, but how do I reset it as the start up drive when I'm stuck with this black screen. One more thing, when I try to reset PRAM I don't get a second gong.
Info:
iMac Intel Core Duo 2GHz 17", 2006 model
Currently I'm upgrading from Leopard to Lion (via Snow Leopard) on both an iMac and MacBook Pro (both Intel), but before I proceed with the OSX upgrade I wanted to back everything up. Thus far I have partitioned an external firewire drive (G Drive - one that is bootable), and cloned each machine using Carbon Copy Cloner to it's own partition (both GUID). There is plenty of space left over on each partition, and is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
The issue - I can boot the OS X from the external drive on the MacBook Pro but not on the iMac.
When I restart and hold down Option on the iMac the only drive that appears is the HDD, not the other two drives that are visible if I boot up on the MacBook Pro. On the iMac in System Prefs > Startup Disc I can see all 3 drives but when I select it and restart, the machine freezes on the grey loading screen and goes no further.
Not that it should make a difference, but there is a 3rd partition on the external drive that is currently empty (for extra storage).
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
How do I back-up an iMac using an external G-Drive?
View 4 Replies View RelatedDisk first aid sees the drive but the "mount " button is dim. I am connected by a usb cable. I am using Lion 10.7.3.
I had been using the drive connected to an airport extreme. That configuration failed its connection to my imac. The drive is now connected now directly to the computer. .
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iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3), airport extreme
With new HD installed I am having trouble restarting from my external drive to copy data to my iMac.
After selecting external in sys prefs the restart goes only as far as white screen with apple logo.
My new HD is 500 G, OS X 10.7.4. The external is a WD 250 G using SuperDuper, OS X 10.6.8.
External drive does not appear on desktop?
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I think that my internal hard drive crashed, my imac is 5 years old. Can I use an external hard drive for my computer? If so, what kind should I get (brand, memory size, connection - firewire, etc.)?
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I plug in a Toshiba 500 Gb External Hard drive and it doesn't show up on the desktop, in the finder window or in Disk Utility. It shows up in all those places on my work iMac and my son's laptop. why my computer doesn't recognize it?
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 w/4GB memory
