OS X :: MacBook Disk Erase Failed While Booted From External HD
Aug 4, 2009
I'm booted on a MacBook Pro from an external drive, and I want to erase the drive inside the MacBook using Disk Utility from the external. For some reason or another, it won't let me do this. When I click on the Erase tab (whether clicked on the disk itself or the volume "Macintosh HD") and try to erase it, it returns with the error:
Disk Erase failed
Disk Erase failed with the error: Could not unmount disk.
When I try to install an image onto the drive, I get a similar error, except it says "Operation not permitted." When I tried it while booted with an OS X DVD, it worked fine. As far as I know, I should be able to do this while booted from the external HD.
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Sep 23, 2008
I purchased a 32gb usb flash drive from ebay. I transferred some music on there, it crashed half way through transferring.
When I restarted and plugged it in, it didn't appear on the desktop. I went into Disk Utility and tried to erase it, I get the following error:
Disk Erase failed with the error:
Input/output error
So I then tried the following in Terminal:
diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ newdisk disk2
But got the following message:
Partitioning encountered error Input/output error (5) on disk disk2 NO NAME
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Apr 26, 2010
I'm trying to format a new external hard drive and it is not working. It is a Seagate 1TB Expansion drive. The box only says PC and Windows, but the guy said 'it should work on a mac too, as long as you format it on a mac', and other people on the internets say it should be fine also e.g. here.
So, when I go into Disk Utilities > Erase tab > change Volume Format to Mac OSX Extended > click erase, it gets about 2% in and then an error window pops up which says "Disk Erase failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: File system formatter failed."
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Dec 15, 2010
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
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Dec 15, 2010
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
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Jun 22, 2012
My iMac is currently being booted from external disk via Firewire 800. I have to do this until I receive new install disks from apple to resore my machine.
The computer is usable, however internet is very slow... I have other devides, windows machine, ipad, iphone and they all run okay.
It seems that because I have booted via the external disk..... internet is slow. Could this be as the OS is needed to refer to the external disk?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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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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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.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)
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Nov 7, 2009
i just erased my external hard drive through disk utility my accident. I had VERY important files and the 1tb was full.
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Aug 28, 2014
my disk was not ejected properly, and when I inserted the usb cable,
the disk couldn't be mounted D: but I don't understand why the Time Machine partition still works well...?
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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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Apr 30, 2012
I recently got a 750 GB WD 'My Passport' external backup drive (the USB3 version) and every time I plug it in, my MacBook Pro starts the spotlight process and then within 5 seconds kicks the drive off!
Then, it gives me the lecture dialogue of dismounting the drive correctly (via Finder for example), not to just pull the drive out of the USB port!
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Sep 12, 2014
Time Machine reported it failed backup due to the shortage of disk space. But I see the total space of partition is 192GB，the whole backup snapshot estimated is 177.56G.Â
The massage said that " failed backup, 52.85 GB is needed for backup but it's only 25.17 GB available." Â
I know it's 166.35GB of ancient snapshot still exist, but why not OSX to delete it automatically and release more space for new snapshot?Â
By the way, I can't delete those ancient snapshot in Finder manually, perhaps permission denied.
Info:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Jun 26, 2014
What can be done if Time Machine failed to save certain data to external hard disk, but I do have the old hard drive? I have a new IMac 10.9.2. The old IMac was hit by lightning/surge. Restored data from external LaCie disk but some information is missing. Apparently Time Machine did not save it to the external disk, or we just can't locate it. We do haves the old hard disk and will put it in a box to be able to access it.
Is partitioning the answer?
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Apr 19, 2012
I'm trying to recapture/repair my Entourage database on G4 Powerbook running 10.5.8. I've booted from the Leopard installation DVD, but when I try to "repair disk" Disk Utility says the disk cannot be unmounted.Â
Let me backtrack:Â I've run verify permissions and repair permissions.Â
When I run "verify disk" I could a couple of red-letter notaionsÂ
-- Invalid Extent Entry
-- Invalid Extent Entry
-- Incorrced number of file hard linksÂ
and then the conclusion:Â
-- Fileystem verify or repair failed. Â
Info:
PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8), G$ 17"
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Aug 29, 2014
I have a Macbook Pro . The hard disk failed smart disk and my laptop does not start any more. Is it ok if I replace the HDD with CGET or WD hard disk rather than the apple hard disk. the pros and cons of a non apple HDD.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
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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.
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Apr 10, 2012
Is there a way to determine if your mac was booted of an external drive in the past?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Jun 20, 2014
I was having problems with the external drive where I store my Time Machine backups, so I tried plugging and unplugging the drive but could not mount the drive. I ran Disk Utility and tried to verify the disk, which told me the disk needed to be repaired. I tried to repair the disk only to get an error message that Disk Utility could not repair the disk and it needed to be reformatted. So I tried to erase the disk with Disk Utility only to get the error message "Volume erase failed: Media kit reports not enough space on this device for requested operation". I am not sure what else to try at this point and could not find any similar questions here. Â
The drive in question is a 3TB USB Seagate Backup + Desk Media, formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It's divided into two partitions, one of which (2.2 TB) holds only Time Machine backups of my desktop and laptop and the other of which (800GB) is formatted similarly with some files stored on it. I was able to verify and repair this other partition. I'm running Disk Utility 13 on an iMac (2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running OSX 10.8.5Â ...
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Aug 7, 2010
I bought a used mac and when I erase the disk, afterwards it still shows 2 files and 2 folders on the disk taking up 40+mb of space. What is that? When you erase the disk isn't it supposed to be completely empty?
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Jun 18, 2012
Installing Imac back to factory settings, erase disk shows could't unmount disk how to solve
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), I bought a usb stick with the OS Xa
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Feb 24, 2012
I have a Macbook Pro 2.1 GHZ with 2GB of RAM from 2006 with Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) and I bought Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.3). I want to install the new OS but I had some problems with this process. Do I have to erase my hard disk first and then install Snow Leopard? I want to keep my documents on my hard disk and the programs that I have.
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Nov 10, 2009
I'm trying to format my disk due to an error with boot camp. However, I cannot push the erase button as shown below.
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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
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Apr 25, 2012
I'm unable to erase a disk/volume so that I can migrate. The only thing it's allowing me to do is erase free space. I am using MacBook 10.6.8 and migrating to a different MacBook using 10.6.8.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 25, 2012
I have a MacBook Pro which was originally supplied with OS X10.4.9. I have upgraded using disks purchased from the Apple store to 10.5 and subsequently 10.6. More recently I upgraded to 10.7 using the download from the online App Store. I would like to perform an Erase and Install to get rid of the 'dross' on my hard disk and may do this as part of the 10.8 upgrade although have yet decide whether to wait for this or not.Â
when doing the erase and install, do I have to start from scratch by loading the original 10.4.9 OS X version or can I start at 10.7. If the latter how would I do this given that I don't have a disk as it was downloaded from the App Store?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
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Dec 7, 2014
How do I recover the data after erase the Macintosh HD disk and also reinstall the system?My laptop could not be turned on last Wednesday, but I needed to finish up my assignment and submit on Saturday.I searched online a way to keep my data but the laptop could be fix up.
Under disk utility, I erased the Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then reinstalled the system.It's said that in this way my data will be all kept, but when I finally got my laptop turned on.All my data was gone including my files, applications, and so on.
Hardware Overview:  Model Name: MacBook Air Model Identifier: MacBookAir4,1 Processor Name: Intel Core i5 Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 2 GB Boot ROM Version: MBA41.0077.B11 SMC Version (system): 1.74f4
Info:
MacBook Air
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Sep 21, 2009
I've got a problem with my MBP. It finally came back from repair centre today. My Harddrive was broken, so they put a new one inside. Everything worked OK, until I decided to install Snow Leopard, and after that put my superduper backup from my external HD to the MAC hd. I restarted the MAC while I kept holding down the "C" button, (snow leopard disk inside) I went to install OSx menu,-> Disk utility-> MAcintosh HD->last TAB (can't remember the name)-> and dragged the External HD in the first bar, and mac HD in the Second. Also I checked Remove Mac HD when copy the Backup to MAC HD. I pressed the button and the EST time was about 2 hours. After one hour my HD made some noise and gave me an error: Something with Failed to load or Failed to copy. After that it did removed my Macintosh HD drive. It's just Gone! I don't know what to do.. Can't install my mac it's completely useless right now..
Here are some pictures describing the situation:
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Jun 19, 2012
We recently purchased a MacBook Air for a family member. She was using an old MacBook with Snow Leopard. Tried Migration Assistant, but after running overnight, the process hung with "less than a minute remaining." After waiting several hours, we decided to shut down both computers and start over. MacBook Air started up fine, and we were able to migrate from a Time Machine backup. No problems there. The old MacBook was greatly affected. The computer will not start up. The grey screen with the progress bar shows up on boot, but never moves beyond the spinning process circle. I tried booting from the OS install disk to use disk utility to repair it... but the machine seems to not accept the DVD and ejects it.Â
The only mode that I can boot into is single-user mode. I have tried using fsck to repair the disk, but even after many repeated attempts, it exits with "The volume could not be repaired." I think that this is an issue with the B-tree, which must have been damaged during the improper shut down during the migration. Are there any other options for recovering the computer? Again, this will not boot from the install disk, and the only mode that I can seem to access is single-user mode.Â
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Apr 4, 2012
You can not post a blank message.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.3.x)
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