External USB Drive hangs Disk Utility when trying to Format

Hello Everyone,
I have a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300gig hard drive in an enclosure connected to my iMAC via USB. The drive was previously used on an Win XP pc and worked fine. I want to format it and use it as a backup for my MAC. When I plug in the drive, OS X says that it can't read the drive and asks if I want to initalize it. I go ahead and select 1 partition Extended Journaled and hit go. The Maxtor spins up for a few mins and then the colour wheel shows up and the Disk Utility shows not responding and the light on the Maxtor goes off. I have to force quit to get the Disk Utility to shutdown. I can format and parition the drive no problem on the XP pc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Rem

I also had a problem initializing and partitioning a new Seagate Barracuda 400GB drive with the NexStar GX (NST-370GX) external USB enclosure as described above. Neither my G4 MacBook Pro or my Mac Mini Dual core could initialize or partition the enclosure/drive. I could however hook the enclosure up to my XP machine, format it using NTFS, and access (read) the drive on my Mac Mini just fine. I didn't check it on the laptop though after formatting it using XP. This still was unacceptable.
After doing some searching online, I discovered this post on 123macmini.com:
http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2629
where the post points out that the NexStar GX enclosure is a rebranded Macpower M9-LX. Then I discovered on the Macpower site:
http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/m9/m9lx
that the enclosure is not compatible with any Seagate Barracuda drive greater than 160GB. Doh!
After swapping out the Barracuda drive for a 300GB Western Digital drive I could then initialize, partition, and use the enclosure on my Mac Mini without any problem.
I was using OSX 10.4.7
I hope this helps others out there with the same configuration.
Ctut

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Unable to verify or repair my external hard drive with disk utility, reason being ...

Hello there,
I have been facing this problem: After I started getting an error 50 error while trying to view in Quicktime player a movie which I had exported from FCPX today, I found that I was not even able to trash the movie [this was a test movie used for export and I had no need for the same]. A little while later when I opened FCPX, I found this message pop up:
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Hello Klaus,
I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
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IMac Finder cannot see external hard drive but Disk Utility can

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Open the Finder.
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Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
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some help please...
I've got a 120gb external USB/NDAS drive that was previously formatted in NFTS on a Windows XP machine. Using Disk Utility on my new MacBook, I attempted to erase it and reformat it using the "MS-DOS" option in Disk Utility (so I can use it on both OSes). I got the spinning beach ball for several hours, at which point I forced-quit Disk Utility. The drive is now unseen by Windows, and when I plug it into the MacBook, it tells me it can't be mounted, so I choose initialize. When I attempt to either erase or partition the drive for MS-DOS, I get the beachball. I left it overnight to see if it was just taking a while, and no difference.
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I had a similar problem with an older drive, eventually I did get it formatted using my iBook, but it wasn't worth it as the drive failed completely several months later (at the most inconvenient time, of course). If the drive is older than 3 years it might be on its last legs and you would be better off to buy a new drive anyway.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

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Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, I forgot to attach image....
Message was edited by: TheSpoon

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
3. So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
4. No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

10.4.10 will show external hard drive in Disk Utility (in turn, mount)

Here's the problem in a nutshell. When I'm running 10.4.10 my Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (installed in an external enclosure) will not show up in Disk Utility (in turn also unable to mount). My DVD-RW burner will work, the enclosure is fine. When I boot off of the Mac OS X Install CD and run Disk Utility the drive and its partitions display. I did an archive and install and they were back in Mac OS X (10.4.7). - Rather than using Software Update, I decided to download the 10.4.10 Combo update manually and install (with the drive ejected and unplugged of course). Same issue once booting in Mac OS X 10.4.10...
Before I do an archive and install again, and revert to 10.4.9 indefinitely, is there anything I can try. I did googling, deleted some preference/cache files with no success.

This bug popped up after 10.4.9 was released and many folks (myself included) have experienced the same problem - after the install external hard drives, both FireWire and USB, are no longer accessible or visible.
In fact, I'm searching the discussion boards now to see if the 10.4.10 update fixed this. Apparently it has not.
Here are some other threads about this and 10.4.9 that might be of use to you:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=897541
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=892387
I finally reverted to 10.4.8, which perfectly recognizes my external drives, and will not update until I know this bug has been fixed. As far as I know, reverting is unfortunately the only way to fix this issue.:(

Seagate 1.5 TB external hard drive and Disk Utility

I have a Seagate 1.5 TB external hard drive. Up until recently it was working fine. I noticed that things stored on it were starting to take longer to open up. There was a relatively constant clicking noise on it, not just when Time Machine was backing up my files. I finally ran Disk Utility and it said that the volume needed to be repaired. Ever since that time the hd is not showing up on my desktop or in my finder. I used the startup disk and went into disk utility but it doesn't appear there. When I turn on the computer in regular mode and go to disk utility it is there, though. When I click "Repair Disk", though, nothing happens. Any suggestions? Do I need to just erase the disk and reformat? I was able to use a program called Data Rescue to get the most important files, but I'd rather not start from scratch.

Hi jc
Can't say exactly what's wrong or what happened. But sense you have recovered your important files your best bet is to just reset the Partition Scheme and re-Format the drive instead of trying to repair it.
1. select the drives first icon and then click the Partition tab
2. under Volume Scheme: for current select 2 Partitions +(2 in your case, 1 for TM and 1 for other files)+
3. now adjust the size of partitions by clicking on and holding the little dot between the partitions. +(you will probably want to allocate at least 1GB for time machine and the rest for misc. files)+
4. click the Option button right below that and select GUID Partition Table, then the OK button
5. then under Volume Information Name the Partitions the larger Time Machine, the smaller whatever
6. then for Format: select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
Optionally if you have say over 500GB of data on your Internal HD it would be best to set that 1.5GB up with just 1 Partition for Time Machine only and use a second drive for misc. files.
Now that you have the External HD properly Partitioned and Formatted open the Time Machine Preference and set it up to use the Time Machine Partition.
Dennis

"Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." Trying to format my iomega external HD for use with Mac

Hi. Trying to connect iomega ext. HD. i have to reformat for Mac. When i plug in & go to Disk Utility,the external shows up and i'm supposed to click "partition". When i do, a box comes up saying ""Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." I quit and relaunched, same results. After googling my question, i came up with this:
"Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility."
(Quitting and reopening Disk Utility does not help.)
The following also appears in Console log:
*** malloc[419]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x290a410; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug : for architecture i386 object: ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes malformed object (unknown flavor for flavor number 0 in LC_UNIXTHREAD command 27 can't byte swap it)
Workaround
Quit Disk Utility.
From the Finder's Go menu, choose Go to Folder....
Type the following, then click OK: /Library/Receipts
Temporarily remove these iTunes receipts from /Library/Receipts (sort the folder alphabetically as a list):
iTunes.pkg
iTunes4.pkg
You can put them on the desktop, for example. Do not remove iTunesX.pkg or iTunes Phone Driver.pkg.
Open Disk Utility and repair disk permissions again.
Quit Disk Utility.
Put the removed iTunes receipts back in /Library/Receipts.
Note: This issue does not affect Disk Utility's verify or repair disk features.
All seemed good, for a moment, until, upon going back to Disk Utility after removing itunes4.pkg and putting on desktop (i did not have itunes.pkg to remove) the same thing was happening. When i highlite my iomega ext. on left of page, disk perrmissions is grayed and does not allow me to click on it. Same problem from the start. Can somebody please help me out here? That would soooo awesome. Thanx!

i'm just scared i will do something wrong on my own and lose my data.
You shouldn't be scared of that, because you should already have backups. If you don't have backups, then backing up is the first priority.
Insert the Snow Leopard DVD and restart. When you hear the chime, hold down the C key and keep holding it until the Apple logo appears on the display. You should now see the language selection screen. Select your language, then choose Utilities > Disk Utility from the menu bar. In the Disk Utility window, select the external drive (not the internal). The drive may already have a data partition, in which case there will be another icon below the drive icon. Choose the drive icon, then select the Partition tab. Create a single partition with the default options (GUID partition table, Mac OS X Extended Journaled).
When the partitioning is done, select the startup volume on your internal drive in the DU window. Select the Restore tab. Drag the icon of the startup volume to the "Source" field. Then drag the icon of the newly-created volume on the external drive to the "Destination" field. Make sure you have this right. Then click the Restore button, and the data on your startup volume will be copied to the external drive.

Can I REPAIR my External Hard Drive in Disk Utility without losing all of the Data?

So, here's the story...
A while back, I made the mistake of throwing my TM backups in the Trash folder. They were "stuck" there in my External Trash FOREVER until I finally decided to do something about it. I read a few forums that gave instructions on how to delete those volumes through Manually through a series of prompts in TERMINAL. This process actually WORKED and removed the files from the trash, HOWEVER, now the Disk isn't mounting properly. After running "Verify Disk" in Disk Utility, It's telling me that the disk needs to be repaired.
Fearing that my disk may be wiped completely, I thought I'd transfer all the files over to another HD and Repair the Problematic Disk just to be safe.
But When I try to copy the files over to another drive with ample space, it gives the message "The operation can’t be completed because the selection contains both backup items and non-backup items."
I am now at a cross roads, because I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE ALL OF THE DATA ON THIS DRIVE!!!! What do I do??

Hi,
If it is not mounting properly but you can "grab" something in an effort to Transfer it, what are you seeing ?
Can you limit it to different files/folders ?
Other than that I would try Carbon Copy Cloner (you can Try before your Buy sort of thing)
Use this to Create the Backup of the drive.
Then repair drive.
8:07 pm Wednesday; January 1, 2014
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

HT1553 How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

I always advise Mac users to never:
encrypt a disk
set a firmware password
In my experience they cause more loss of data than they are worth.
On Leopard I always use the latest free Carbon Copy Cloner to backup and clone disks - it is so simple to clone to either a disk or disk image. The free version may not be compatible with later OSs.
As you appear to be on the wrong forum I will follow this with my standard message.
Whilst it may not be your fault I am afraid it appears that your post is on a forum which is not the best for your OS. It will save the time of the unpaid volunteers here, and may resolve your issue faster, if you could examine the list below and see if there is a more appropriate forum to which you could direct your question.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
OS X 10.7 Lion
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
OS X 10.5 Leopard
OS X 10.4 Tiger
OS X 10.3 and earlier
OS 9, OS 8 & System 7
OS X Technologies
OS X Server
iPad
iPhone
iPod
Other

How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

forget about that and just use the free APP Superduper
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)

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