Cannot properly format Western Digital 3.0 TB SATA drives

Hi, I have purchased a few Western Digital 3.0TB Caviar® Green Hard Disk Drives and today have been attempting to format them. Unfortunately, they are only showing 800.79 GB available... after using Disk Utility on Intel based Mac(s) running 10.6.8. (specifically a 2010 Mini running 10.6.8 and a 2009 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac). I cannot find anything addressing this on any blog, let alone the Western Digital site. I am formatting them Mac OS Extended Journaled, GUID 1 partition. Am I doing something wrong or are other customers having similar problems?
Sincerely,
-ddscott57

ddscott57 wrote:
Very smart, thank you... My system utilizes several Mac Minis and I am therefore reliant on using their interfaces (which in this case is having to settle for USB 2, as my single Firewire ports are in use by a Canopus). I've been digging for more up to date 4 Bay Enclosure units but to no avail when it comes to having both the USB 2 option as well as the 3TB capability. Seems I'm gonna lose for now on the 3TB SATA purchases.
Perhaps just purchase a single drive enclosure for the 3TB drive(s), if you can't return the drives. But considering that HD prices are expected to rise due to shortages, I'd probably not return the drives.
I have no experience with Canopus products, but I'm assuming that the Canopus has issues with daisychaining, similar to other high-end audio devices. (If not, then obviously you can put the Canopus device at the end of the chain or get a Firewire hub.) Perhaps you want to look at some sort of NAS enclosure, which would have faster transfer than USB (although not as fast as Firewire.) This assumes you attach the Mini and the NAS to wired gigabit ethernet, and not Wi-Fi.
edit: BTW, OWC's Mercury Pro Qx4 and Drobos appear to support 3TB drives.

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After formatting Western Digital 4 TB hard drive to Mac OS extended (Journaled) 1.11 TB of space has been used. Number of folders 11 number of files 59. I am running lion Is this a normal use of space?

After formatting Western Digital 4 TB hard drive to Mac OS extended (Journaled), 1.11 TB of space has been used.
Number of folders 11. Number of files 59.
I am running lion10.7
Is this a normal use of space?

Wait.... can the BIOS on your machine support greater than 3TB?
Most cannot.
4TB drives, from what I've read, require an all new drive controller. As older drive controllers would max out at 3TB's.

I have a MacBook Pro and it cannot locate my Western Digital External Backup Drive.

I have a MacBook Pro and it cannot locate my Western Digital External Backup Drive. It used to work prior to Maverick but now it doesnt. Do I need a different cord or what can I do so I can use Time Machine with this drive?

Your problem is really with "Time Machine", backup software included with OS X since version 10.5, not with your Time Capsule router. For more information on Time Machine, check these Web pages:
Time Machine FAQs
Time Machine Troubleshooting

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may not like to hear, but I'd skip on MyBook cases, nice looking as they are.
Get a 2nd drive case to recover to.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire
may need to play with the demo Data Rescue 3 from Prosoft
Backup/recover before repair is usually in order
never have one backup set. THREE sets of your data, minimum.
3rd party disk maintenance and repair should be a must and given rather than rely solely on Apple Disk Utility.
Data and system maintenance and recovery plan - should be like practice for sports, arts, military with practice and making sure you will know how and the tools you need - ahead of time
Resetting USB/FW ports, try another if one won't work. When 10.6 came out there was a lot of grinding teeth with external drives not working or mounting.

Will a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive fit into my 12" PB

Hi all,
Done some searching on the forum but i can't find the correct info. So here goes my current 60gb HD is full so i need a much bigger one.
I have found one on a UK web site a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400rpm 8MB Cache for a good price http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132386/showproductspecifications
,this seems to be the biggest i can find. Will it fit and work correctly?? It is 7 cm x 10 cm x 9.5 mm
On this forum i can only find details of a 160GB seagate being fitted (this one i assume Seagate ST9160821A 160GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400RPM 8MB Cache ??)
Have i got the IDE bit right or do i need a SATA, both listed as mac compatible but which one?
Thanks for your help
Phil

Done some searching on the forum but i can't find the correct info. So here goes my current 60gb HD is full so i need a much bigger one.
Have you considered an external hard drive, so you can back up your current system plus use it for additional storage? If it needs to be portable, you can get any size 2.5" drive and put it in a firewire case, for example http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go (it's a US store, but you get the idea). You would need either a firewire or combined firewire/USB case, as our Powerbooks can only boot from a firewire device.
I have found one on a UK web site a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400rpm 8MB Cache for a good price http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132386/showproductspecifications
,this seems to be the biggest i can find. Will it fit and work correctly??
Yes, it will fit. There has been some question recently whether the Powerbook bios (that's a Windows term, so the Apple equivalent) will support a drive that large. While it shouldn't be a problem, I'd want to confirm that someone else has one installed.
Have i got the IDE bit right or do i need a SATA, both listed as mac compatible but which one?
You're correct that you want an ATA/IDE drive. Our Powerbooks cannot use SATA drives, which are used in the current Apple notebooks.

Formating Western Digital External Hard Drive gets an error

Hi!
I just bought a 500GB Western Digital External Hard Drive (uses Firewire 400), primarily for storing HD iMovie and Final Cut Express files. When I checked the iMovie support, it recomends to format the external hard drive as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). I opened Disk Utility, selected the hard drive (My Book) and followed the steps to both erase and reformat it. I have gotten an error numerous times that says:
Error
+Disk can't be remounted+
Something like that. I don't know why I'm having this problem, but any help would be very appreciated. I just bought a Canon HV20 and want to get to use it soon...
Thanks!
Apple.User
FYI: I have an Intel iMac and Mac OS X 10.5.2, along with any of the latest updates for it.

Try doing it this way:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Does Western Digital make quality internal hard drives?

I'm looking to buy a larger hard drive for my MacBook (1.83GHz).
This Western Digital drive popped out to me for its price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136071
How do Western Digital hard drives compare in quality to Seagate, Toshiba, or Hitachi?
13' MacBook, eMac, Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Hello,
All hard-drives have similar technologies and your mileable may vary by a number of determining factors:
1. Portable drives often endure extra stress by being dropped and other things.
2. Drives life may be expanded by properly performing maintenance on the drive at regular intervals. This reduces the amount of time a query on the drive takes to execute, thus extending the life of the drive.
Most hard drives work well, however, some hard drives do not have drivers that work with some systems. Most HD's have drivers that work with a variety of systems, so this really isn't a determining factor with new computer systems. I personally have seen the best mileage however with Seagate drives in Apple devices. Western Digital does make good drives, but some of them are very noisy.

"Time Machine" Backup Using Western Digital 160 GB External Hard Drive

I'm trying to use "Time Machine" to backup to a Western Digital Passport 160GB USB 2 external hard drive. The message that I continuously get after starting "Time Machine" is "Preparing...." and the backup process never begins. I've ejected the drive and plugged it back in. The drive is good, as I've been able to drag and drop files on the external drive icon, which is on my desktop. Has anyone else had a problem using a WD USB 2 external hard drive in conjunction with "Time Machine?" Thanks in advance for any insight into this problem!

Suggest you post your question in the Leopard Time Machine forum @ http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
 Cheers, Tom

Western Digital 'My Book' Ext FW Drive Specs Updated (and a Q)

There are a number of restrictions on booting from these drives. I've seen some references on this forum to the Knowledge Bases at Wdc.com, and I see they have updated and added to those on 30JUNE2008. For anyone interested, see # 1715 and #1787.
http://tinyurl.com/5j3pug
http://tinyurl.com/5kz6ju
I bought the 'Home Edition' a few days ago at Costco and it will be going back. I support a number of Macs in my family, and I can't be dealing with this 'works on some, not others' when other companies products do not have these restriction. Even these KB's are vague. For PPC booting w/FW, they do not list the HOME EDITION as YES or NO, they just leave it off the list. I suspect it may work with some Macs and not others, and they did not want to bother with the specifics.
I know that the Intel machines need different formatting to boot, I'll just have to deal with that.
Based on info from the 'SuperDuper!' user guide, I ordered (on it's way) a Neptune HDD from OWC. I know the folks at OWC are Mac-Friendly and knowledgeable, so I expect I'll be in good shape.
Question: Any other recommendations for good external drives for backup/boot? I'd esp be interested on externals that support S.M.A.R.T. status - I have not seen any references to that in the specs I've read. Not essential, but nice. A second FW port for daisy-chain is another 'nice, but not 'must have' for me.
Hope this is useful info for people. I plan to write to WDC - I wasted hours on this before I realized it was not boot-able on most of my systems. Zero erase, partitioning, backing up, then trying to figure out what I might have done wrong when it appeared in the boot selection, but would not boot. The least they could do is put that critical info somewhere where people can see it before they invest all this time in it.
-mwau
NOTE: This is not Leopard specific, but I did not see a 'general' type area to put this in.

Since I already installed the two packages on my
internal drive before formatting, is it still
necessary to put the software back onto the external
drive?
The software only needs to be installed on your boot drive. So if you're not booting/running from the external, then no, you don't need to put the software on the external. If you still have the original installers, though, I'd keep a backup in case your internal drive ever needs to be reformatted.

Unable to mount Western Digital Hard Drive after upgrade to 10.6.4

I have tried to search for a solution to my problem, but have not found anything that seems to help. So hopefully someone here can provide some guideance.
I have a Western Digital 1TB My Book that I have been using primarily for backing up photos. The drive is formatted as FAT-32 so I can work with it from my Windows XP laptop too if I need to (although my Windows laptop mostly collects dust since getting the Macbook). I have been using the feature in Adobe Lightroom to automatically backup each photo to the My Book when it is being loaded into Lightroom. I also backup the Lightroom catalogs to the My Book.
Occassionaly I would get the "beach ball of death", but not always related to being in Lightroom at the time. I recently had a beach ball incident. After a restart and using Disk Utility on the Macbook's HD, I decided to check for any updates. At this time I ended up upgrading from 10.6.3 to 10.6.4. After doing the upgrade, I can see the drive in Disk Utility, but the "My Book" volume is greyed out. Running "Repair Disk" has no effect. The "Repair Disk Permissions" buttons are greyed out. I cannot get the My Book volume to mount to be able to use the drive. If I plug the drive into my Windows XP laptop, Windows can work with it just fine. I ran the windows check disk program, which took 24 hours on 1TB, and it did not find anything. Plug back into my Macbook, and it still cannot mount the My Book volume.
I also tried to plug in a Western Digital My Passport portable 400GB drive which is powered by the USB and does not require a separate power supply cord. It has the same issue where the "My Passport" volume cannot be mounted.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to get the Macbook to mount the drive again? NOTE: I'll probably not be able to try any suggestions or respond until Monday, but if there are multiple suggestions queued up over the weekend it will give me a good starting point when I can get back to this on Monday.
Thanks,
Jim

tempest68 wrote:
The Combo Update worked. But I need to know why.
Although I have no proof or authoritative source that confirms this, using the Combo seems to account for anything missed by or changed since earlier updates.
This originally started after check for updates, and the 10.6.4 update is when the problem started. What is different about the Combo Update, ...
Pragmatically, the difference is that it just works for me. Mathematically:
Combo http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 is File Size: 887.37 MB
Incremental http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1049 is File Size: 607.21 MB
887.37 - 607.21 = 280.16 MB more in the Combo.
... and how would I have known about it had someone else not directed me to it.
If you have skipped some updates, your Mac's Software Update... (SU) will suggest Combo.
Someone else (Thanks, Defcom! ) told me about Combos years ago while I was still running 10.3.x.
BTW, many users never use or seem to need the Combo.
You seem to be an experienced user. If you have been using Macs trouble-free for a long time without updating via the Combos, you may decide not to bother with the Combo except in specific cases where you have a problem that isn't corrected by other fixes.
Is there somewhere on the website I need to check regularly in addition to the normal updates?
You can search Support Downloads for the latest Combo Updates any time.
http://support.apple.com/downloads/
You can decide when to search any way you choose, but here is my process:
• I set my Macs' SU Preferences to Check for updates: "Daily."
• I do NOT enable "Download updates automatically."
• When SU notifies me that a Mac OS update is available, I quit SU without installing anything.
• Then I repair permissions, download and install the Combo, and repair permissions again.
• I then run SU again to install any other updates that are available on the same date.
Message was edited by: EZ Jim
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4) MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11) iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9) External iSight

Macbook Pro Harddrive Upgrade Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT

I recently purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drive (WD10TPVT) in order to replace the 500GB hard drive in my Unibody Macbook Pro 15" running Mac OS X 10.6.4.
After swapping the hard drives I wanted to install Snow Leopard from the scratch on the empty hard drive. I partitioned the hard drive and started the install, but after about 30 min the computer seems to freeze. I tried several times, and each time the behavior is similar. After swapping the hard drives again (back to the old hard drive) I connected the WD10TPVT via an external USB enclosure, and now it works fine - over an extended period of time. So I'm fairly sure the drive itself is working properly.
I did some research, and it seems that people had similar issues with this drive (e.g. a thread in this forum titled "WD 1TB WD10TPVT in Late 2009 15" Unibody Macbook Pro - NEED HELP!" from April 15). It seems to me that this issue is old but still unresolved, and I wonder if there are any new developments concerning this problem. Is there a "generic" solution?
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Thanks a lot!

There are known issues with replacement HD's on 2009 MBP (and, posibly other models too).
According to Apple support, it is due to acceleration sensor, which in MBP requires HD to have custom firmware.
There was even a fix to solve this issue (which I cannot find now, and it actually didn't solve much).
So far, the best "fix" seems to be to install HD with Apple firmware (works 100%). There are reports that certain drives without acceleration sensor are working properly too, a bit expensive to try, though.
Still a mystery why Apple does not clearly warn about this issue.

Western Digital External Hard drive keeps undocking when running time machine.

I have been using a 2TB Western Digital My Book external hard drive for about a year now to run time machine and backup my files. The past month I have noticed that my backups have been failing. I try and for a backup and about halfway through it gets "delayed" because of an error. Then I have a alert pop up on my desktop with the following message:
The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off.
The disk was not unplugged from the power supply or the usb port. I am stumped. Anyone know what is going on and how to fix it??

I would avoid WD, Seagate, LaCie, and Iomega external drives, and any drive with special features such as networking or built-in backup software.

External FW/USB Western Digital, Seagate Disk Drives and 'Sleep' function

As you are aware, most external disk drives be they FW or USB (and irrespective of the manufacturer, save for LaCie) have a 'sleep' function built into their Firmware. In the case of the Western Digital and Seagate Ext FW drives I have, this function cannot be disabled and this per both WD and Seagate.
Unfortunately this is extremely annoying if using Photoshop and Bridge...it takes about ten seconds for each disk to spin up while the latter programs search the drives. (In Windows this can be enabled/disabled. Not so with the Mac O/S I have been told). Multiply this by six of the aforementioned drives and it can be quite time consuming.
Is there an OS-X workaround for this?
Thanks again,
Lyman

I always avoid vendor cases. Might want to look at an Oxford 912 etc, or better yet, why use Firewire when eSATA works so well?

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Thanks,
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Format it from the Mac using Disc Utility
If you format the drive as a single partition and use Mac GUI / HFS Journaled then you won't be able to read and write to it from both platforms.
If you want to Boot the Mac from it then make the first partition a Mac Bootable one and then make the second partition FAT32 so you can read and write data to it from both platforms.
Hope that's clear if not post again

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I bought the western digital "My Book Studio" drive (WDB3G0030HAL). I installed the system from time machine backup and it wouldn't boot so I reinstalled Mountain LIon using the recovery partition. After that, I learned it will boot my macBook Pro but still doesn't boot the iMac.
I have found older articles about western digital having problems getting external drives to boot.
Does anyone have newer information or work arounds?
thanks
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Here is a list of WD bootable drives:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1787/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvd GltZS8xMzUxNTIzMzIwL3NpZC9ueUFYc1g5bA%3D%3D
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Cannot properly format Western Digital 3.0 TB SATA drives

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