MacBook :: OS X Mavericks (10.9.4) Can't Erase / Partition Or Unmount External Hard Drive
Aug 28, 2014
I have a MacBook Pro running OSx 10.9.4 and have been successfully using Time Machine with a WD My Passport External Hard Drive for a while. Now (after 10 days with a successful back-up), the computer will not back-up. I have gone into disk utility and tried to erase, partition, and/or repair the disk, but repeatedly get error messages - it can't erase the disk, re-partition the disk or unmount the disk.
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), External Hard Drive
View 2 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Jun 21, 2014
I replaced a 1 TB external drive partiotioned in 2 with a 3 TB extrnal drive run/store my corbon copy cloner back up and time machine.
The 3 TB drive was successfully partitioned through the disk utility and both back ups are installed and the initial back up is complete.
My question is about the 1 TB drive. I want to completely erase all data from the drive in order to use it for a different use.
Using disk utility one of the partitions deleted without incident when following the same protocol the second partition produced error messages.
Volume erase failed
Volume Erase failed with the error:
Couldn’t unmount disk.
If I try to eject the disk
It says it will not eject becaus e a program may be using it...
The only program that utilized this partition is Carbon Copy Cloner which is not being utilized on the new 3TB drive.
I do not see where there is a option to have more than on disk chosen for this purpose so am unsure why the disk utility is seeing the old partion as still in use.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 26, 2009
I want to carbon copy my bootable external drive to my main internal bootable hard drive so I tried to use Disk Utility to erase it but it will indicate that it failed and can't unmount. When I tried to manually unmount by dragging it to the trash it indicated that it is in use. I can't understand why it's in use since I booted from the external drive which I wanted to the copy to the internal drive.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 15, 2012
I've just transferred my data to a new computer and now need to erase the hard drive on my old one.. I've tried Disk Utility, increased the security, and tried 'erase' but I keep getting an error message "couldn't unmount disk". I've gone into Partitions and tried deleting the HD there as well but I get the same message. I just want to get the computer securely wiped and would like to keep Lion as the operating system.
Info:
Macbook 2GB ram, Mac OS X (10.4.9)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 14, 2010
I have the Seagate Momentus XT and I have a quick question. If I reformat the Hard Drive portion does that erase the SSD side as well? If not how do I erase the SSD side of it.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2014
I've been having problems booting into my OSX partition. At the time it started I wasn't using my Macbook Pro (Late 2009) very often so whenever I needed I just booted up into my BOOTCAMP partition. Anyways, I decided to finally stop being lazy and do a clean install. There's nothing on either partition of the same hard drive that I want. I put together a bootable USB drive and boot from it. From here I go to the Disk Utility and try to erase the entire drive. It gives me this error: URL....
Now, that's not a screenshot from my mac but its the exact same error. Anyways, I've tried to find something on point but I just can't. Some posts have stated that the hard drive is broken, but if that's the case why can I start up the BOOTCAMP partition of the exact same drive flawlessly? I can even manipulate files on the OSX partition from Windows 7.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 6, 2008
I have a 2.5" hard drive connected via USB to my MacBook that keeps unmounting itself. This happens under some (what seems to be) undetermined amount of time, the drive will all of a sudden unmount itself and disappear from the Finder, Disk Utility, et al.
Is there some fix, setting or work around for this? Very annoying. If not, is there a way to re-mount the hard drive without turning it off then on or reconnecting the USB cable?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Dec 6, 2014
I'm trying to erase my SSD internal drive that is corrupted software (Yosemite).I'm booting from an external with 20GB Yosemite OS & 480GB that contains files I've dragged off the internal SSD.I'm getting the error:Volume Erase failed with the error:Couldn’t unmount disk.How can I get around this?
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), 13"
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 5, 2008
G4 Dual 867 2g OS10.5.4. I have 2 external drives (Lacie 200g USB - Western Digital 120g USB) that unmount unexpectedly, sometimes they remount.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 25, 2012
I can't seem to find any instructions online about how to do this, step by step. Want to make sure all personal data is erased. I'm interested in performing a full format that at the very least zeros out the data on disk.
Info:
Power Mac G5, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 7 Replies
View Related
Mar 28, 2012
Macbook OS X 10.5.8 and a WD 10EAVS 1TB External Hard Drive. That's all. I was given this by a fellow student on campus who was graduating. So I want to use this to store my iTunes Library (my Macbook's hard drive ran out of space). Here's what I do:
- Macbook is turned on and running
- I plug the external hard drive into a working outlet --> Hard drive turns on
- I plug the external hard drive into the mac using a USB connection --> Disk Insertion Error message: the disk you insterted was not readable by this computer
- It is not readable so I open it in Disk Utility (the hard drive is listed/recognized)
- I attempt to erase and/or partition the hard drive in order to format it in Mac OS Extended OR Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but I get one of these two messages: "Disk Erase failed with the error: File system formatter failed." OR "Disk Erase failed with the error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
I attempted to look up what these mean or how to fix the problem but nothing is really working. I was able to format the hardware line to MS-DOS (FAT) and the sub-line as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but I don't even know if that's right or not.Basically, I need my computer to recognize this hard drive whenever I plug it in and to run smoothly as "extra space" to store my music on.I haven't had A LOT of experience with external hard drives but enough to get things done. But this problem is a killer.
Info:
mac book, Mac OS X (10.5.6)
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 1, 2009
I am using a macbook with an Intel Core 2 Duo (about two years old) and I am running leopard (10.5.8).
I have been using a Western Digital 250GB External Hard Drive with a firewire connection to utilize Time Machine for the past 6 months. All was going reasonably well until recently. (It would occasionally get stuck backing up and I would have to restart my computer and then backup again, but otherwise ok)
Last week I turned my computer on and it didn't recognize the drive. It gave me the "Initialize" "Ignore" option screen. I tried everything before I tried erasing it, but eventually I decided to lose all of that backed up data and just erase the drive and start from scratch. (I backed up on a different drive prior to trying this.)
Anyway, now when I go into Disk Utility and click on the Erase tab and then try to erase the drive (doesn't matter which erase option I choose) it says it is unable to erase the drive. If it is plugged in w/the Firewire cable then it gives me an "Invalid Argument" error. If it is plugged in with the USB cable, it gives me a input/output failure error.
Does anyone know if I can fix this drive? Any ideas as to what may have caused the problem in the 1st place. Months ago I accidently unplugged the drive without ejecting, but it worked for for a long time after that.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 2, 2014
Cant erase hard drive because cant "unmounted disk"...My hard drive crashed about a month ago, and i used a program called data rescue to clone hard drive. when i put it in mac it will not load. now all i want to do is erase the drive and install Yosemite as new mac. but cant install or erase the hard drive.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5)
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jul 23, 2008
i have a 320gb external hard drive and was wondering if i could partition it so i could use it just as an external hard drive on one partition, but have time machine on the other partition. i just recently got my frist mac, which is a macbook, and i love it.
View 5 Replies
View Related
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?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Feb 26, 2012
I tried to erase my backup files from my external hard drive. Once in the trash, I cannot delete the backup.backup file.
Info:Mac OS X (10.6.7)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 25, 2012
How do I partition my external hard drive without losing the data already on it? I've been using it with Time Machine on my old computer, but want to use it as a regular drag-and-drop type back up on my new computer. Is there any way to basically split the hard drive so I can still access the Time Machine backups on my old computer, but also be able to use it with my new mac?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 26, 2012
I am trying to reinstall Lion on my macbook pro, but every time the hdd shows up as 'locked' and when I attempt to format it, it gives me a "volume erase failed with the error - cannot unmount disk" message. It appears as if some files withing the disk are still running but I have no way of quitting them-knowingly. I can specify more if this seems to vague.
Info:
MacBook Pro
View 5 Replies
View Related
Apr 14, 2012
My Mac Pro [with 4 internal disks, 2 External Disks (Sata Raid 0), and several external FireWire disks and a Voyager disk station] has a little problem with letting externals go Since a few weeks I have a problem with unmounting my externals. After unmount, the unmounted disk will mount again immediately.No time to disconnect cables and/or power. Hinders disk management, backup, and simple disconnecting disks. It only happens with disks (FireWire 400/800/ SATA and USB alike). USB sticks work fine.
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 11, 2009
Recently I bought a Mac OS X Leopard, which comes with the Bootcamp. I have the XP operating disk, and Virtual Box, which is another program like Bootcamp. Instead of the bootcamp way of rebooting every time you switch between operating systems, Virtual Box allows both systems to run simultaneously. Instead of taking up space on my hard drive, I purchased a Seagate FreeAgent (Desk Edition) 1TB external drive.
I need to partition this drive in two, to allow the combined running of PC and Mac OS X using Virtual Box. The formats I will be using are FAT 32 and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The latter is very easy, as I can simply do this on the Mac. However, the FAT 32... Since I am splitting the external hard drive in two, my XP PC cannot create a partition using FAT 32 which is greater than 32GB, and if I create the F32 partition using the Mac it won't be recognized by the PC operating system.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Nov 25, 2009
if I could partition my external hard drive so one half holds all my Mac OS X data such as Itunes music and the other half hold my Microsoft Windows files.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 22, 2009
I have a WD 640GB External drive and i would like to partition some for time machine and some for storing my files. i just have some questions:
1) If i partition the drive into 2, in the future can i join the two partitions together again?
2) does the whole external drive have to have the same file system like HFS or NTFS or can one partition be HFS + for time machine and the other partition NTFS to make it readable on windows?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Dec 26, 2009
if i can partition my Windows NFTS External Hard Drive. I do not want to format it because i have some important files and programs on my External Hard drive, But I also want to use it for Time Machine Backup. I was wondering if it was possible to Not format my Hard drive, Partition it, And then format the 2nd partition to Mac, and use it for time machine. I am using Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8
The Capacity of the EHD is 55.9GB
Available: 37.1GB
Used: 18.8GB
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 5, 2010
I've done some searching on the forums, but I cannot find exactly what I need. I currently have a Maxtor external hard drive partitioned into two sections; one for time machine, the other for music, movies, etc. Normally, the two separate partitions would show up on my desktop (labeled "Music" and "Time Machine") but as of lately the Time Machine partition fails to show. I cannot find the volume anywhere, but the Music partition still reads perfectly fine. how I can relocated the Time Machine partition?
View 7 Replies
View Related
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
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 22, 2014
I have a western digital hard drive that had previously been working flawlessly on Lion, however when using it with Mavericks it had suddenly stopped working meaning it would no longer be found on the desktop or in finder. I have been using the hard drive as a time machine backup. the obvious next step was to launch disk utility and look for a solution. I have found there two hard drive names in disk utility, the first is the HDD name of Western Digital and the second is the "Time Machine" partition. Running first aid on the partition resulted in an error and that the disk could not be repaired. This HDD is important and the data cannot be lost.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
View 4 Replies
View Related
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...
View 4 Replies
View Related
Oct 30, 2009
I am looking at getting an airport extreme along with an external hard drive. My idea is to use the external hard drive as network storage along with a time machine drive for my MacBook Pro. Is it possible to partition the external drive with one partition being for network storage and the other for time machine?
View 3 Replies
View Related
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
View 1 Replies
View Related
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.
View 3 Replies
View Related
