How long should it take to reformat an empty external hard drive? It's a GForce MegaDisk two terabyte hard drive and it's been going for about 11 hours with no sign of stoping.
Shouldn't it be pretty quick, since the hard drive is empty?
I recently bought a 640 GB Comstar external hard drive for my macbook, and it came out of the box formatted in NTFS. I know that if the drive was in this format, I could not use it with my mac. So I opened up disk utility and tried to reformat it into Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but disk utility showed an error and the drive wasn't reformatted. So I tried FAT32 instead, and it worked. The drive has been working fine now, however, I have realized a limitation of FAT32: the files can only be smaller than 4 GB. This is a problem for me, so I need some advice. So here is my dilemma: I need to be able to share the contents of the drive over a local network that has both windows and mac computers. (Users on the network only need to be able to read the drive, not necessarily write). However, I can't use FAT32 because of the file size limitation. I'm not sure how to format the drive so that I (using my mac) can read and write it, and users on the local network can read it. I'm thinking HFS+ (mac os extended, journaled), but will windows users be able to read it then?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have a folder which I deleted from my external hard drive. Whenever I empty Trash, I get the insufficient privileges error. The folder is empty.
I've tried emptying the trash, securely emptying the trash and used these Unix commands in Terminal too:
rm -rf .Trashes
rm -rf [directory]
sudo rm -rf [directory]
rmdir [directory]
I read in this thread that hard drives have to be formatted with HFS+ to work with OS X. I want to buy a hard drive on eBay that is wiped clean but formatted with NTFS; my question is this, how can I reformat the hard drive to work in my yet-to-arrive MacBook?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI had to reformat my hard drive due to some bug I had. I don't have Apple hardware, but did have Quicktime (Pro?)- the version where you can create a .mov. I have forgotten how to download the software, and don't have an installment disk.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am running an early 08 MBP w/os10.7.3.I really screwed up this morning with a backup disk. my backup system consists of several external, stand alone drives and a HD dock and several internal HDs that plug into that dock.I had a stand alone Iomega/200G/USB that i wiped to give my son who doesn't "get" backups yet. I simultaneously had the USB dock plugged in w/ a Samsung 1.5TB HD powered on. I had moved the Iomega data to the Samsung prior to erasing the Iomega w/ Disk Utility. I had chosen the 7pass wipe on the iomega last night following the data transfer. it had completed 2 passes this morning w/ fourteen hours still showing til completion. i decided that three was plenty and disconnected the iomega to reconnect and select the 3 pass option to expedite. USB dock w/Samsung still powered on and plugged into MBP. disk utility defaulted to the samsung when iomega was ejected. I hit the three pass option and started the wipe without seeing Disk Utility default to the samsung. I did immediately see the flashing red data transfer light on the dock come on and realized my mistake. Immediately disconnected the USB HD dock. Disk Utility was showing "preparing disk" in its status bar. It appears that the formatting has been wiped as reconnecting the dock gives me a "the disk is not readable by this computer". I'm sure the data is still there, but the disk needs to be reformatted. The disk appears in the disk utility sidebar. all disk repair options are greyed out.
I am considering using partition in Disk Utility as that would reformat the samsung disk. However, the data on the disk would normally appear as a blue segment on the rectangular disk setup diagram. there is no blue. According to partition docs, you can partition a disk w/out the data being wiped. However, if the disk is unreadable when the partition process starts, will it wipe all the data as it partitions and reformats? Very reluctant to initiate this process w/out knowing more.
Info:
macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
l I now have to completely wipe, re-format and re-load OSX onto my iMac's internal HD, My iMac is a late 2009 27" and at present has OSX 10.8.5 loaded, ( loaded but with many miss-functions ). Prior to the problem the iMac was running OSX Lion, what version though I can't remember.I installed 10.8.5 the other day to see if that would fix things, but it hasn't. It was not a "clean install", just regular one from downloaded OSX 10.8.5.
I have run Disk Utility and TechTool Pro' 7 to try to make repairs to address the problems so far to no avail. Main problems are that my most used applications, FCP-7 Studio, Aperture and Photoshop CS5 amongst others, open but then immediately crash. I've reloaded the troubled applications, de-installed them properly with de-installation app's then clean re-installed them, but that's made no difference. They will not mount.
I reckon there must be a fault or corruption on the HD, probably caused during the Optimisation as everything was functioning well before I did that. So, the only OSX install disks I have are the original disks that came with the iMac, OSX 10.6.2 and a Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD OSX 10.6. I do have the downloaded copy of OSX Mountain Lion that I pulled from the App Store the other day and that copy is now on an external USB / Firewire 800 HD.Â
As I said I would like to be able to clean off the iMac's internal 2tb drive completely and install a fresh newer OSX. If I first have to load OSX.6.2 then upgrade via the App Store that's fine, but I'd rather just go straight to Mountain Lion if possible. Whatever works best. Getting rid of any corruption on the iMac's HD is the prime motivation.Â
All my applications and files are backed up to a 2tb LaCie external drive.The iMac has approximately 900 gb's of content onboard and the rest is free / unused space.
So I bought a 2tb external drive to save space on my main drive - I copied all my movies and have been dropping a bunch of mini dv tapes onto it - but when I open the drive none of them show upÂ
When I get info in disk utility I get one that shows I have avaialble 1.99TB of 2 TB - and right below it says 890 MB are used - don't get it
Tried the disk utility and it says they are working fine .... repair did not seem to do anything
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I have a large trash file---600 GB---on a WD external drive that I'd like to empty to recover space for backups. I don't know how to do it. I don't have a clue where to start?Â
My understanding is that with the .Trashes folder selected in Finder, if I issue the empty trash command what gets emptied is the trash on my computer. How do I empty the .Trashes folder on the external drive?Â
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
I've been thru a million google searches and forums and I can't find this problem anywhere. I put a folder with music in it in the trash (from a Lacie portable HDD) and didn't realise it was locked. Now I can't delete it as I don't have sufficient privileges. I can't change it in the folder get info view either and no matter whether I try put it on my desktop or back on the HDD it won't move or delete whats in the trash. I tried doing a terminal delete and dropping the folder into terminal but it says the directory doesn't exist? I'm thinking it stuck in the HDD which is why whenever its plugged in the folder is in the trash. I'm looking for a way around having to format my EHD
View 4 Replies View RelatedHow do I empty Trash ?
Info:
MacBook Pro
I did a disk repair and verify disk on my external hard drive. When they were done, it created a folder called "lost+found". I deleted it and it went to the trash. Now I can't delete it. I tried the option key, using terminal and secure empty. None worked. When I unplug the external drive, the trash is empty. I connected to another mac and it appeared in the trash there and I still can't delete it. I also tired using disk utility to delete free space and that didn't work. I called apple and they stated to format the drive but I don't have enough storage anywhere else to copy the data.
Info:Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
if I bought a new hard drive, would I be able to install SL on it? (the HD would not have leopard on it)
View 5 Replies View Relatedif i delete files off my internal hard drive (Macintosh HD), will it still be on my external hard drive or will it just add to it?
View 1 Replies View Relatedwith cloning/copying the content one an external hard drive onto a new external hard drive. Basically, I have a 500GB FW400 drive which I use to store my media files. It's full, so I purchased a 1TB FW800 drive to replace it. Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting "insufficient space" errors.
View 9 Replies View RelatedRecently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive). After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too. Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
I need to back up hard drive to an external hard drive. How can I do this automactically?Â
Powermac g5
10.4.11
tiger
Info:
Mac OS X (10.4.11)
i have a power mac g-5 quad with an external dvd drive and a external hard drive and 2gb of ram. on my ext. hard drive i downloaded mac the ripper and that is where i put all my dvds, now today on my pmac i was using mac the ripper, popcorn, itunes, safari all at once and it froze up on me?why? could the ram be an issue? how may programs can i use at once with my pmac?
View 3 Replies View RelatedLooking for opinions or comparisons on performance between an internal mac hard drive vs an external firewire 800 hard drive or better. Is the performance on an internal MP drive or iMac internal drive much faster than connecting to a firewire 800 drive? I'm sure it depends on the drive, I'm wondering about apple factory installed internal drive vs say a WD external firewire 800
View 12 Replies View RelatedI have a MacBook that I'm trying to backup because my husband wants to sell my computer and buy an iPad. I have a WD external hard drive with an iPhoto library currently on it, chronicling the first 28 months of my first child's life; needless to say it's important! The problem is that Time Machine won't back up to the external drive without erasing everything on it! Is there any way around this?
I will probably also need tips on how to put the iPhoto library (28 months to present time, about 2,200 pictures!) on my MacBook onto the hard drive (does that automatically happen upon backup?). Obviously I've done it once, because there is a library currently on the hard drive, but I can't remember how I did it.
In other words... I have moved my music library to the external hard drive, as per an earlier thread I read here on the forums. It worked like quite well. Now that it is working perfectly, I am having a hard time leaving well enough alone. It is never a good idea for me to think too much...Can itunes be installed and run on/from an external hard drive? If so, how?
View 15 Replies View RelatedMany times in the past I have had to reformat USB drives once I have bough them so that they will work properly with my Macs and have never had any problems. I was just about to buy a USB online and thought I would check the Q&A for anything suspicious. Someone had asked the question; "is it possible to use this drive with a Mac", and someone from the store replied; "No, and it is not possible to reformat".Â
The drive is a Toshiba 500GB Canvio Basics USB3. Can some drives not be reformatted as this bloke seems to think or does he not know what he is talking about?Â
I have attached screenshots from the site.
my mac has a pioneer dvd drive in it and it wont read my dvd+r dl and I am wanting to burn a mac os 10.5.dmg to it and install 10.5 but the dang thing is ejecting it. So what should I do to get it to work get the external dvd and run it from it or get a external hard drive and try it that way.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have a new external Hard Drive and I am trying to reformat it to Mac OS Journaled however It will not let me stating that "The underlying task reported failure on exit". However I am able to reformat it to MS-DOS and change the name of the drive but I am still not able to reformat it to MAC OS. Anyone have any ideas or should I give Western Digital a ring tomorrow?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am reformatting an internal hard drive in an enclosure to use as a media storage drive. I attempted to reformat the drive and partition it as a Mac OS X Extended however it will not erase the current volume and reformat. The volume on there currently is literally the HD with the old OS and Files and such on it, so am I missing a step in the reformatting process? Do I need to reformat as Free Space or FAT or what?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI have a 24" 2.66Ghz 4GB RAM iMac with 640GBs of internal HDD space, and a 2TB external drive I use to store stuff. About a month ago I tried partitioning the drive during an ubuntu install, and it messed the [external] drive up. I have had some more problems caused by the install (OS X didn't boot, didn't show up when restarting+alt etc.), so I had backed up my entire internal drive to my 2TB external one, and re-formatted my HDD.
Everything went back to normal, till I noticed I have ~600GBs missing from my 2TB drive. I tried iPartition and it shows that I have 20KBs or something like that that are used by the filesystem, and no other partitions (so my drive has one partition and everything's supposed to be there). I'll provide you with a DW log shortly. What can I do to get my 600GBs back?
This is what im trying to do. I have a macbook with 120gb hard drive. thats not enough space from my music collection. So i was wondering how to make itunes run off a external hard drive. I looked around and found was for a PC.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have an elderly Q950 with an external hard drive with everything backed up onto it. The external drive is a Micronet ADV1000E, with a sticker on the back saying it's Macintosh or PC compatible. I also have an iBook laptop, & PC Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. As I have the 2 laptops, the Quadra hadn't been switched on for maybe one year. On the weekend I tried to get it to boot up (with & without the external drive switched on), but all it does is display a grey screen with an image of a 3.5" disk with a '?' in the middle. If I start up from a Norton 3.5" disk it still can't find the external or internal drive. If I try booting up with my finger in the shift key it doesn't want to know.
1. Any idea why the Quadra isn't seeing either the external or internal drive & what can I try to do?
2. Is there any way I can connect my external drive to either my iBook or Dell? At the moment I have no cables to connect the old & new - are cables available & if so any idea where from? I've looked high & low but so far no joy.
3. Is it possible to remove the hard drive from the Quadra or the external drive & put in an external drive enclosure, then connect that to either laptop? I see there are drive enclosures available which are Mac & pc compatible. This by the way would be a major undertaking for me. I'm by no means a computer dunce but would be wary of trying it.
when I went into the "get info" window for the G-Drive and switched the ownership/permissions dropdown from "read/write" to "no access". When I tried to switch it back to read/write, it would say read/write in the dropdown, but then I'd try to access the g-drive and I'd only get to the first set of folders--when I'd click on a folder, there would appear to be nothing in it. (Not sure if this is really related to my current problem.)
I then tried ejecting and remounting the drive, but it didn't show up on my desktop. Stupidly, I assumed my computer didn't recognize it at all and unplugged the firewire without ejecting thru disk utility. When I did this I got the device removal error.
I then plugged the firewire back in and tried repairing the disk in disk utility, but it said it didn't need repair. When I click on the G-Drive in disk utility the info at the bottom says:
Mount Point :/Volumes/G-DRIVECapacity :465.6 GB (499,973,603,328 Bytes)
Format :Mac OS ExtendedAvailable :
Owners Enabled :NoUsed :
Number of Folders :0Number of Files :0
0 Files! I'm worried about losing all my stuff! I then tried DiskWarrior (v4.0). When I first opened it I think the info at the bottom said "This disk is a Mac OS Extended disk. This disk does NOT appear on the desktop." I'm not quite sure about that "not" b/c after rebuilding the directory of the G-DRIVE I know it now says "This disk does appear on the desktop." Anyway, it's definitely not appearing on my desktop. After building the directory it said "All file and folder data was easily located. Comparison of the original and replacement directories indicate that there will be changes to the number, the contents and/or the attributes of the files and folders." And later: "19 files (and 2 folders) had a directory entry w/ an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired." And:
Disk Info:
Files: 51,646
Folders: 18, 493
Free Space: 65.42GB
(etc)
I then clicked "Replace" whereupon it said it was successfully replace. But still it did not appear on the desktop even after ejecting, remounting, rebooting computer, etc.
If anyone has any advice I'd really appreciate it. I'm pretty desperate here! Thanks!
(FYI I already tried going into the Finder permissions and unclicking and reclicking the box for showing disks on the desktop. Also, I plan on getting DataRescueII in case that's necessary, but i hope it isn't)
