Copying a drive with Disk Utility

I have a USB drive used for Time Machine that is failing. Disk Utility says it can't fix it, but says I can copy files from it.
I attached a new drive and am using Disk Utility's "Restore" function to clone the new drive from the failing one (both are 1TB drives).
Disk Utility says on the screen that it is "copying blocks". Does this mean it's doing an image copy rather than a file-by-file copy? It seems to me an image copy in this case might be bad, because it could cause any file or directory corruption on the old drive to be copied to the new drive.
Are my worries justified? Would I be better off just using the Finder to copy files? Are there third-party programs that might be better? (DiskWarrior says it can't fix the old drive because of insufficient memory.)

I have SuperDuper! but didn't have it installed on that machine and thought I would give the Disk Utility process a try.
I'm fairly sure SuperDuper! must use file copying, not image copying, and I suspect Disk Utility does too. But that "copying blocks" message made me wonder.
BTW, Disk Utility is telling me it's going to take over 24 hours to copy the terabyte. Both drives are connected via USB 2.0.

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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:
Got a little worried and then tried to verify and repair my hard drives using disk utility, but I could neither verify nor repair the disk. What should I do now?

Hello Klaus,
I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
I have been using my Seagate 2 TB drive [2 USB] with a FW adapter and was using FW connectivity for the past several months without any problems. About 2 months ago I added a 2 TB Lacie, FW, to my workflow and this EHD was daisychained to the Seagate. Had been facing no problem with this arrangement until today.
Now let me try to tell you what I had done:
I ejected the Seagate drive with the intention of reconnecting it again. But, no, when I tried to reconnect, this message came up:
After several attempts, I did this, connected the Lacie by FW to the FW port on the Mac and connected the Seagate by 2 USB. Was I glad to see my Seagate HD icons shining in all their glory on my desktop! I utilised the services of disk utility and was informed that these prodigal sons were absolutely fine.
I also tried to do this: empty the trash. Was I happy to hear the sound of files being cast out?
Well, well, at least I will be able to get some peaceful sleep now! I have not yet opened FCPX, but I trust it will also be reading the Seagate HD once again.
Good night and thanks for being helpful.

Problem partitioning external hard drive with Disk Utility

I'm trying to create a new partition in disk utility in an external hard drive using disk utility and every time I click Apply it says that "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and can't continue. Quit and relaunch Disk Utility". It is a 3TB hard disk and I already created the first partition of 2 TB, and when I click the + symbol to add a 1 TB partition and click Apply is when the error shows up. I have restart the mac, unplugged the hard disk but the error still shows up. Anyone has any idea??? Thanks for your help in advance
David

I solved this issue. I was able to create the partition with the format MS-DOS and then I erased it to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Now it is working OK. Hope this help someone

Can I create a raid drive with disk utility

I recently bought a 2TB seat gate external drive.
I want to use this drive with time machieve as well as set it up as a raid drive to strode photos.
Is this possible to do with disk utility?

Hello
you can not make any kind on RAID type with only one hard drive you need at least tow drive to perform a RAID volume
then , hard drive utility can be use to perform software raid ( Level 0 an Level 1 only )
for more info about RAID technologie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Pierre

Problem Erasing external drive with Disk Utility

I've just purchased some Western Digital My Book Pro 1Tb firewire drives. They come pre-formatted for Windows. When I try to initialize them, Disk Utility returns a failed message & the drive then disappears from the desktop. It is still visible in Disk Utility. I can reformat as a FAT partition but not as a Mac partition. I tried connecting the drive to machine running Tiger and was able to format as a Mac partition. Is there a problem with Disk Utility in Leopard?

I have seen some behavior like this a few times before. When this happens I go to my Linux box and dd a bunch of zeros to the beginning of the drive, this will blow away any partition tables and such.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=100k
This writes 50MB of zeros to the raw device "sdb" (this may be different depending on your system)
I've tried to dd from MacOSX, but for whatever reason it's painfully slow.

Format External Drive with Disk Utility, Make it Windows Compatible

I have formatted my external drive using disk utility, and it works great on my Mac. But no Windows PC can read it, and I need to use it on Windows PCs. I tried formatting as MS-DOS FAT but that didn't work either. What can I do?
Thanks so much in advance.

I've run into the problem fairly regularly were I format a drive as FAT32 on the Mac, but Windows won't read it. I just reformat it from the Windows machine as FAT32. My Mac always reads and writes to it just fine, so it has never been a problem, just a minor mystery.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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

Problems formatting external drive with Disk Utility

Hi all
I'm having some odd troubles with using Disk Utility to format an external hard drive. For some reason, it is giving me all sorts of errors and problems.
Currently, it will let me format the drive in MS-FAT, but won't let me copy certain files to it (it gives an error code). I'm currently trying to re-format the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but the status bar give me the following error and continues to do its 'pondering' instead of giving me a progress bar:
!http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5019/picture2csm.png!
It is currently sitting like that, not doing anything (not even going unresponsive).
What am I doing wrong here?
Cheers.

Wait, scratch that, it suddenly started working again.
For some reason, I had to partition it, with one partition a Mac OS partition and the other an MS-DOS FAT... hey ho, no idea.

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.

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)

Why is there large used space after erasing external drive with disk utility?

I just used disk utility to erase a 2 TB external hard drive. After erasing it, it shows that the disk has 12 folders, 62 files, and 852 mb of used space. I thought the "erase" function is supposed to format the disk? Where does the large used space come from?
By the way, the disk used to formatted as a windows disk. I suspect it has something to do with it but have no idea what. Any help is greatly appreciated!

HI - i do not think this is purely metadata. (though it could be with your windows disk with such small used memory) i have a 1TB macbook pro drive that i have tried to reformat
METHOD 1 (recommended by advanced Apple Techy) - select hard drive (not partition) select mac os (journalled) and press 'apply' - "this will format drive removing all data. it is always best to work with the drive and not partition, if you are formatting an entire drive."
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED
METHOD 2 (after response from Apple techy) - select hard drive and mac os (journalled), press secure erase and select 'write zeros' takes 12 hours
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED

I create a new partition in an external hard drive with disk utility. Now it says mounting disk and it's taking forever. Is that normal? Please help!

I have an external hard drive from seagate. Tonight I decided to give it a try and add a new partition to it so I could have a bootable version of mountain lion in it it just in case of emergency and no internet. After creating the partition, disk utility says "mountain disk", and its been doing it for at least 20 minutes and not moving... Any ideas? btw, now the external drive is not even showing on the left-side bar...
Thanks!

I would try reformatting the drive and creating the partition again. Make certain that you erase the drive and format it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and the partition the drive.
What you describe is not normal... try again.
Clinton

Ok to use computer while restoring a drive with Disk Utility?

Hey everyone,
I'm backing up my HD onto an external by using Disk Utility's restore function. I was wondering if it was ok for me to use my computer during this process or if it'll screw up the process. I know it'll make it go slower, but I was wondering if that was the only draw back.
Thanks alot!
Message was edited by: ewanog

No, not is not wise. Run the program and than continue. I know this takes a while, yet wait until you go to Leopard, in which the average time is over 10 minutes. But, please do not interrupt Disk Utility.
Ray

Can Time Capsule hard drive be accessed with Disk Utility? I'm having issues...

How does one mount , inspect , verify , and possibly repair a Time Capsule hard drive with Disk Utility ?
My 500Gb 1st gen Time Capsule ( used wireless with Airport) has quit backing up new data . ( iMac Core2Duo, Snow Leopard) . TC says it needs 238 Gb of available space, but only has 35 Gb available. So it quit doing new incremental backup altogether. It's almost like it wants to start over.
Airport connection seems good. Time Capsule seems healthy enough ( for being 3.5 years old) . I really dont want to lose the data on the existing backup.
What is the nature of this glitch ?

I'm sorry , LaP , but " Time Capsule become too full " is not the cause of my problem .
In fact, I just got done pruning the iMac system hard drive a little to free up some 10 Gb of new space , yet created only maybe 1-2 Gb of new data to archive. The TC had been doing regular daily backups without issue and Time Machine was showing me stuff from about ten days back.
The TC informed me it needed 235 Gb of space but only had 34 Gb available. That 235 Gb needed is totally in error. My problem more resembles corrupt hard disk directories . Maybe Permissions ? which is why I asked about using Disk Utility.
Yes, I do need a newer larger TC, but pigs don't fly and money does not grow on trees to make tha happen. The backup I have now is fine and should work if I need to restore anything in the forseeable. New data will not be archived, alas.

I'm trying to backup a my harddrive with disk utility but I'm getting an error Unable to create Backup.dmg" (input/output error). Is there any other way to save my data? I believe my hard drive is failing or corrupt file. I can't boot up. Grey screen

I'm trying to backup a my hard drive with disk utility but I'm getting an error Unable to create Backup.dmg" (input/output error). Is there any other way to save my data? I believe my hard drive is failing or corrupt file. I can't boot up. Grey screen and spinning wheel. I've tried everything https://discussions.apple.com/message/20580424#20580424
any help will be greatly appreciated.

Check here. Also have you done a TimeMachine back up?
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570

Copying a drive with Disk Utility

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