Can't erase a Seagate external drive

I want to erase the usual 'PC' related files which come as standard with new drives, but as soon as I select erase it gives me the waring: Disk Erase failed with error: File system formatter failed.
I have tried to erase 2 different drives and both times I get this. Can anyone advise? Thx.

rkaufmann87 wrote:
Are you interested in using the drive exclusivly with OS X, if so then I'd suggest doing reformatting it. Format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility. If you need instructions on how to do this please look over:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Formatting_an_External_Device
for instructions.
This is exactly what I've been doing, once I click erase it starts to show the progress bar and immediately gives the said warning.

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Can i use a seagate external drive with my mac?

Hi, probably a dumb question but i want to make sure before i buy, can i use this drive-
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=18283 84&Tab=5
with an imac g5? to me,it seems like a good price. i have fceHD and a 1.8 g5 with 512 ram. Thanks in advance. Ben
Imac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

The hard drive itself is excellent. I have two external FireWire/USB 2.O drives, both of which contain Seagate drives similar in specification to the one you propose to buy, though both are 300GB in size. My question is whether the drive enclosure is a good buy (i.e. one that will work with your Mac). You want an enclosure with a good FireWire Bridge chip, such as the Oxford 911, which is known to work well with Macs. I looked at your link, but I could not tell which chip is found in the enclosure.
I would not buy this until you find out what kind of FireWire Bridge is in the enclosure.
You may wish to check out the selection at Other World Computing. This is a company that specializes in Mac products, so you know your product will work with your Mac. You'll pay a bit more for a similar hard drive at OWC than the one you are considering presently, but as they say, you get what you pay for. OWC backs it products with a great warranty, too.
iMac Intel Core Duo 20", 1.5 GB RAM, OWC 300 GB FW HD Mac OS X (10.4.5) eMac 1.42GHz, 1 GB RAM; iPod w/ video 30 GB

My mac mini won't back up to my Seagate external drive but can read the information on it. Can i back up to it at all?

My mac mini won't back up to my Seagate external drive but can read the information on it.
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I suspect the Seagate is not formatted to be used with the Mac. The correct format would be Mac OS Extended (Journaled), if you just bought the EHD then almost certainly it's formatted to be used with MS Windows machines. This is easy to fix, here are instructions on how to format it:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU1.html
After formatting Time Machine http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 will launch and will begin backing up. The first backup will take some time however after the first backup it will go pretty quickly.
NOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After formatting all data will be erased, so please if you have data on that move it to the internal HD first and then format. Then once you have backed up you will have a backup copy of the data. Also NEVER EVER use a backup disk to be used to store data. The reason being is if that drive crashes you have not only lost the data you have lost it's backup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
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Thanks in advance.

Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

HT201269 How do I transfer a movie from an iPad mini to a Seagate external drive?

How do I transfer a movie from an iPad mini to a Seagate external drive? Movie is now in iTunes store. Purchased a new Seagate external drive fo xmas and is recognized by the iPad mini. Tried by moving a small video and worked. Now I would like to move two movies that are in iTunes store that were purchased to the external drive to free up space and be able to watch in potential upcoming new Apple Air. Have checked several pages on-line and having no success finding the information to enable me to do this. Some some information about moving the movie to iCloud, but did not seem to work.

You don't need to do this.
Any purchases you make from the iTunes store are yours for download anytime on any device with your Apple ID used to purchase that media. It could also be streamed from the cloud.
Just delete the movies from the iPad if you need the space.
When you get a new iPad, open the iTunes store, go to purchases, and sign in. Then you can download anything you bought with your ID in the past - Free, you already own it.

Can't transfer files to external drive

After the latest upgrades I now can't transfer files to my external drive. I have done it many times before with Arch and now it says I don't have permissions to create it.
what is needed to get it working again?

stefanwilkens wrote:
is this external drive NTFS and are you using GNOME by any chance?
The volume manager now mounts with the ntfs kernel module by default, which doesn't support writing to NTFS. a fix is available in the wiki:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gno … me_Manager
If not, we'll need more information. What filesystem is the drive, what DE / WM are you using, kernel version, etc.
I've used this Seagate external drive many times with many distros and even Windows and haven't had any trouble until today. I don't even know if its ntfs or not. I didn't matter before.
does this mean that I will have trouble with other distros that use Gnome 2.28? Why would they do this? I've backed up the files I need to a cd and I may just use another distro instead. Arch is nice but not that nice if I have to reconfigure things that worked previously.
Will the new Ubuntu 9.10 do the same thing since it has Gnome 2.28?
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Seagate External Drive Will It Work?

Hi,
Does anyone know if a PowerBook G4 15" aluminium will work with a Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive?
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I am also taking the leap by upgrading my memory to 1 GB and installing OSX Leopard. Not Snow Leopard, just the regular one.
Any and all recommendations are welcome.
Thank you,
John Flood

Thank you for your reply.
I need a clarification.
Regarding the USB 1.0 versus USB 2.0...
The Seagate external drive I have has two USB plugs that plug into the two USB slots on my Powerbook. This apparently provides enough power to the drive and I have never had a problem. If I don't need to boot off of it, I still wonder if the new Seagate external drives USB 2.0 will work with my Mac. If you can, please clarify.
Regarding my plan to upgrade from OS X 10.3.x...
I bought a full edition of Leopard on DVD. Will this be enough?
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john flood

LR 4.4 import Error on Seagate External drive

Hi,
I have a Seagate external drive and get an import error wen i try to import images from a memory card. I always import to a new sub directory on the drive. The directory gets created properly and I can see the files get coppied to a temp directory in the directory I specified. The files then get removed and the temp directory is deleted but nothing shows up in the primary directory.
I have verified I can import to other external drive, the other two are WD. I can also import to the internal drive.
I have a macbook pro, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5.
Thx

Let me explain.
I am trying to import into a directory called test.
The external drive is named Seagate2012, the directory structure is as
follows
/photography
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/test
Once the import starts, importing one file, a directory is created called
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directory and the image is copied from he memory card into that directory.
The import takes almost one minute, much longer than normal. After a minute
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I then get a popup titled "Some Import operations were not performed" with
the following information;
Could not copy a file to the requested location. (1)
IMG_2595.CR2
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Art

Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partition?

Using an external drive with shared files (iPhoto, iTunes), attached to a Time Capsule, can the contents of the external drive be backed-up to the internal Time Capsule drive? Perhaps a RAID1 mirror to a partitioned Time Capsule? I understand that the Time Machine (software) cannot backup a networked drive (the external) and that Time Capsule (the router/wireless hard drive) does not have its own backup software... so it won't backup the connected drive. What I would like is an alternate solution for having an automated backup of a networked drive. A 2TB Time Capsule has more than enough space for Time Machine backups of my family of Macbooks, so I had hoped to mirror a 500GB external drive (with shared media files) to a portion of the Time Capsule internal hard drive. I assume this would require a partition of the Time Capsule drive. If not, would the sparse file from the various computers being backed up need to be copied to the external drive as part of the RAID1 setup? This seems like overkill for the Time Machine backup, but it would cover the media files.

The complexity with this idea is the software has to run from a Mac computer on your network.. so you need a Mac turned on, probably most of the day.
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/4
Read carefully the speed of the USB drive plugged into the TC.

Cant seem to get a seagate external drive to show up in finder when on the

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I tested a FAT 32 drive and it will show up.
Open your Hard Drive and look for your AirPort Extreme under the SHARED heading
Click the AirPort Extreme icon and then click Connect As at the upper right of the window
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Click Finder, then click Preferences, then click the General tab
Under the heading of "Show these items on the desktop", make sure there is a check mark next to "Connected Servers"

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My Mac Mini has one 256 SSD and one 2tb HDD. I want to use Time Machine to do a backup of everything.
Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
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Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

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I attach my external drive (Toshiba 320GIG) and open, which gives me the external drive window. I click on Toshiba on the left-hand-side menu, then begin to enter IMG in the search window. As soon as I type the first letter, the menu highlight defaults to my hard drive menu item and I can't search in my external drive. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for reading. Any help appreciated.
Russ

So, you have two versions of iphoto? One from the old machine and one from the new?
If so, forget about opening with the older version of iPhoto.
For the newer version:
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
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Hello,
I accidentally unplugged my 2TB Seagate external drive, and when I pugged it back on, my Mac was still recognizing it, however, when I tried to access its contents, the folders appeared empty, so I tried to eject the drive, but the icon on the desktop was gone, I unplugged it, restarted my Mac, and it did not recognize the external drive. Then I repeated the stunt at lest three times. I thought the drive was ruined, so I got a laptop that runs Ubuntu, and Ubuntu recognizes and displays the contents correctly, which makes me think the external drive is fine. Any ideas on what to do? I mean my Mac won't even acknowledge the drive at all, otherwise I would think about re-formatting. Any ideas, I'd much appreciate it. Thank you.

Hello,
I accidentally unplugged my 2TB Seagate external drive, and when I pugged it back on, my Mac was still recognizing it, however, when I tried to access its contents, the folders appeared empty, so I tried to eject the drive, but the icon on the desktop was gone, I unplugged it, restarted my Mac, and it did not recognize the external drive. Then I repeated the stunt at lest three times. I thought the drive was ruined, so I got a laptop that runs Ubuntu, and Ubuntu recognizes and displays the contents correctly, which makes me think the external drive is fine. Any ideas on what to do? I mean my Mac won't even acknowledge the drive at all, otherwise I would think about re-formatting. Any ideas, I'd much appreciate it. Thank you.

My Seagate external drive won't work since I downloaded Yosemite

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Yosemite is not a Classic operating system. See where to post here:
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Can't erase a Seagate external drive

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