OS X :: Disk Utility Refuses To Format Drive As FAT32?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
i've installed a new Hard disk on My G5 that was before installed in a pc (NTFS), now i'm trying to format it in FAT32 in the Mac!! no way!! i don't know how!
I have to do a back up (I'm cutting in Avid) on this FAT32 volume (for interoperability it is formatted this way), but I can't mount it via the Disk Utility or the 'mount' command in Terminal (it doesn't list the device, despite seeing it in Disk Utility - the volume is greyed out).The drive is connected via Firewire 400 and 800, USB is not available (to few slots).
I have an external multimedia disk currently formated in NTFS microsoft format. I'd like to be able to copy content to it from my Mac and a PC so I thought to format it in FAT 32. can anyone tell me if there is a size limit to FAT32. what are the major limitations of FAT 32 vs NTFS
I use Disk Utility (stand alone, on a USB key) to make backups of my system disk to an external disk and then transfer it from my home system to a MacBook and vice-versa when I need to travel.
Recently, I upgraded from 10.9.2 to 10.9.3 and, not long later, to 10.9.4. In the same period, I also had an increase (not a very big one, just a few GB, less than 15) in the occupied space of that system disk. The current amount of data on it is 164.64 GB.
I'm not sure if my problem comes from the sub-version upgrade, from the increase in data size, from both, or from something else. The home computer is an iMac with a 318.88 GB internal disk. The MacBook has a 500 GB internal disk. The partitions used on the external disk to make bootable backups are 400 GB big.
I can backup both internal disks to the external partitions (and boot on the resulting external disk when I check that it is usable). I can also copy the external backups to the MacBook system disk and boot on the result without problem.
But, recently, Disk Utility has started to refuse copying the content of the external backup partitions to the internal disk of the home system. It says there is insufficient space on the target volume. If the error message is correct, it means that I cannot backup 164.64 GB of data on a 318.88 GB volume!
For the record, the external backup partitions are OK when verified with SOS.
I'm going to buy my first Macbook this weekend and I'm trying to get myself ready so that I don't have to waste precious playing time on stuff like this I have an external hard drive filled with music, videos and files. I would like to keep using my drive on my mac to access my files and save backups etc. The hard drive is in NTFS format and from what I understand the mac will be able to read but not write to it - which isn't what I want. Ideally I don't want to lose the content on the drive, but if I have to I could slowly copy it all onto dvds. If possible I also want the drive to be compatible with Windows so I can plug it into parents/friends/uni's computers and still be able to view/add content on rare occasions. What format should the drive be and how do I do that? (I think I can manage to do it once someone points me in the right direction)
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...
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)
I have 43GB available on a 120GB drive on my MacBook base model and I'm trying to partition via BootCamp.I'm trying to allocate 32GB to the Windows partition but I keep getting the following error message: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've backed up my disk and launched disk utility, and try to follow above directions here but the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) area is grayed out and when I click apply after highlighting the MacBook are (in blue), it errors out and says the disk is out of space.
I am having an issue Partitioning my Internal HDD because some files cannot be moved it was able to Partition a while back when Installed Vista but I deleted that Partition as I needed a bigger one for Windows 7 Beta It says I need to "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume." does that mean I have to reformat my entire HDD? as I don't want to do that.
I have a problem with Disk Utility , when trying to format an external fire wire drive.
I cleaned out the drive and proceeded to erase it with zeros. After this Disk utility will not display the subdirectory or verify, repair, partition, erase the disk. The main disk name is still visible, but I cant access any functions. Error message says input output error.
DiskWarrior will not help, as the original directory is beyond recovery.
I suppose that I have damaged the original directory, and now I would ask the honourable forum if there is any remedy for my actions?
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!
so i got this message "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." what do I do
I have an external hard drive that I'm planning to use for my iTunes Music library, however, I plan to access the hard drive from both my Mac and Windows PC.
Now I know I could format it as FAT32 (MS-Dos Format) in Disk Utility, however, from my understanding, this wont allow files larger than 4GB ... which could be a problem in future.
If I were to format it as the Mac Journal extended format, would I still be able to read and write to this from my Windows PC? Any ideas, or other work arounds for this?
I have an 8gb SecureLock Media memory stick and I cant write to it its currently formatted to FAT32 and was working perfectly fine before, it allows my to drag files of it but i cannot write to it, I can't reformat in disk utility.
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.
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.
I am using this guide to get a new HD into my PS3: [URL:...] It says that the HD I back my PS3 up to needs to be formatted to FAT32. I have an external HD that I use with my mac, its partitioned into 4 parts. I have one partition which I don't use which I want to back my PS3 onto. In Disk Utility I select that partition and I only get 4 option under the Erase tab, 4 different Mac OS Extended options.
i'm looking into buying a 500GB WD My Passport Studio Edition for my 17" MacBook Pro...
I've been reading online that people are having issues with the FAT32 Formatted Passports not being recognized with the FireWire but work fine via USB 2.0...
is there truth to this problem with the FireWire and is anyone else having such issues? I've been all over and see the problem, but no solution or results.
I ran installer then went to disk utility and pushed disk repair. it ran and indicated in green that no repairs were necessary. i then went to startup disk and only the Diks and network startup showed up but no hard drive. i also open computer to make sure was not wet muddy due to leak in cooling system but all was dry
I was using my external hard drive with my mac and its formatted in the MAC HF(something like that) file system. I would like to format that external hard drive such that the file system is either NTFS or FAT32 so that I can use it on my windows partition running on boot camp. I am asking this question since I am planning to get a new HD for my mac and use the old one with windows.
