Disk Utility and 320GB hard drive

I just installed a WD Scorpio 320GB hard drive in my first-generation MacBook. Everything works fine in normal use.
When I go to Disk Utility, however -- using the new internal HD as my startup disk -- the "Repair Disk" button is grayed out. The other three buttons are ok. "Verify Disk" shows no errors, and I can successfully run "Repair Disk" when I start up from a Leopard DVD. The "S.M.A.R.T." status check for the disk is OK.
My question: Is the grayed out button a matter of Disk Utility not being designed (yet) for 320GB disks on a MacBook? -- and I shouldn't worry? Or is the grayed out button a sign that something is wrong that I should be alert to?

You cannot repair the drive that booted the computer so assuming you didn't boot your computer with the installation DVD, this is normal.

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Using Disk Utility to erase Hard Drive

Hi All
I just bought a new external hard drive and am using Disk Utility to erase and format it. I did not know for sure if erasing the hard drive was the right thing to do. Anyway I set up the Volume as follows from the mac help instructions:
1.format OS extended journaled
2.Install OS9 disk driver.
3.("Zero all data" and "8 Way Random Write Format"). So it has been running for about 3 hours now and is only 1/8 of the way writing 0's to disk.
My question is should I continue on and just let it finish up? At the rate it is going It might be done by sometime tomorrow.
Or can I stop the erasing process without hurting the hard drive.
Then start disk utility erasing the hard drive without this Zero all data.
Thanks much

Just to confirm your impression, S. Frigolett: yes, everything should be fine now.
Zeroing a drive is advisable if you have reason to believe there may be bad data storage blocks on it; zeroing identifies those blocks and prevents them from being used (because using them would result in lost or corrupt data). A simple erase doesn't do that, but on a new drive straight from the factory there is no reason to think it's necessary.
The 8 way random write option is for people who have extremely sensitive data to erase from a drive that may pass into other hands, and who want to be sure that no one short of the NSA will have any chance of recovering any of that data. A new, empty drive has nothing on it that even the NSA could recover, so there's no reason to erase it that thoroughly.

Disk Utility - Erasing a hard drive using MS-DOS (FAT)

Hi all,
I have recently purchased a 500GB external hard drive. I have used Disk Utility to format the drive from NTFS to MS-DOS (FAT) so I can use it with Windows PC's as well as Mac's.
My issue is this.
I copied a 1.16GB file over Firewire 800 to test the speed and then deleted it. After deleting the file the info pane still reports that 1.17GB of the drive has been used.
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Thanks!
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Did you remember to empty the trash can? If not, the file is in the hidden directory .Trashes on the Windows drive. You don't reclaim the space until you empty the trash.

Disk utility? possible hard drive failure?

My Mac suddenly has acted up, very slow to load or launch anything. The spinning wheel forever and no chance to Force Quit. Some applications don't even launch at all.
I ran the disk utility, and it gave an error message plus a message that the volume needed repair though the repair button was not open to click on.
Any ideas? Could these be warning signs that my hard drive is about to go?

You cannot repair the boot volume with Disk Utility when booted from it. Boot with your install disk, select your language, and, when the menu bar pops up, select Utilities->Disk Utility and repair the boot volume. If that fails, then report back with the results.

Disk utility reports failing hard drive with error code STF/8/3:2 ATA BUS 0

My imac G5 (running Tiger) suddenly decided not to boot past the grey apple screen with the spinning wheel. I ran the disk utility and received error code STF/8/3:2 ATA BUS 0 MASTER on the mass storage test. I tried to run repair and only received a message "fatal hard drive error etc... back up, recover asap... I could not access the disk so I connected my new MacBook Pro by firewire in target disk mode. My HD shows up however, "nothing" shows up under when my "user" file. All I care about saving is my iphoto library. Everything else is trivial. Can someone Please help me? Is there any way I will be able to save this file?
Message was edited by: Elizabeth Burson

Welcome to Discussions - you can try DiskWarrior and see if it can retrieve some of your data. You can also take it in to Apple with an external fire wire drive you have purchased elsewhere (cheaper) and see if they can transfer the data. You can then install the external into your computer.

Blinking folder with question mark, and disk utility doesnt recognise hard drive, please help!!!

So today i was using my macbook pro and for some reason my CD/DVD drive was causing noise when i put a DVD inside it, and for some reason it did not recognise my DVD. I force ejected it using the restart and clicking, but after that my computer showed a blinking folder and question mark during start up. I restarted my computer to Recovery HD, but instead it took me to internet Recovery HD (i have mountain lion), and so i went to disk utility to repair my disk, but in the left it did not recognise my hard drive. Please help! Im not that experienced in computing!

Sounds like some sort of power issue and now your drive is not working.
You'll have to take this to Apple for repair.
You should read this if you don't have recent backups of your data off the machine.
My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?

Disk Utility To Erase Hard Drive

I've been trying to use Disk Utility to zero out an external hard drive before selling it. The problem is that all of the zero out options take an incredibly long time. I was experimenting with the different zero pass options within the security options section. I selected don't erase data and started it. The estimated time was 30 hours. I then tried the 35-Pass Erase. The estimated time was 500 something hours. Is this normal? The drive I want to erase is an 80GB Lacie drive connected via USB to an iMac G4 15 inch.

iMac LCD (iLamp), 800mhz.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac800fp.html

Disk Repair and Corrupt Hard Drive

I just replaced the hard drive on my iMac because the computer kept hanging and occasionally shutting down. I've run Disk Utility many times over many months on the old hard drive and the message I received is that the hard drive was corrupt and needed to be repaired; DU reported both an invalid file count and an invalid directory count. I made a clone of the old drive before replacing, and low and behold I still receive the same message when I run DU on the new drive. I reinstalled Snow Leopard and added all upates to 10.6.8 via Software Update before cloning the drive. Is the new drive defective? Do I need to reinstall the OS on the new drive? Other ideas? Thanks.
iMac 5,1
OS 10.6.8
2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo
3G SDRAM

You can try this instead:
Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
Do the following:
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.
Most likely you had the same problem because it was associated with your existing Home folder. Best to avoid cloning your old system.

Running Disk Utility off External Hard drive

To run "repair disk" in disk utility on my internal hard drive I'm supposed to insert my Install DVD, restart my mac and run disk utility - however running this program off the disk is much slower than running it off my 800firewire external hard drive. I've tried a few different ways of going about this:
1) Partitioning my hard drive in two (both HFS+) with more than enough room for the DVD, I've tried both making a Disk Image of the Install DVD and dragging it into the source field in the "restore" tab and dragged my Install partition into the destination field, after that was complete, I restarted my computer while holding the "alt" key I wasn't even offered the option to boot to my external hard drive
2) I've also tried after partitioning the external drive, in the restore tab just dragging the Install DVD (not the disk image) from the left of the disk utility window into the "source field" and again the partition into the destination field, and when restarting both with the "alt" key and by going to system preferences -> start up disk and choosing my external drive to boot from, I was still unable to boot off my drive.
Please let me know if anyone has any suggestions! This would be such a big help for me since I'm constantly helping people with diagnostic issues with their macs and this would save me so much time. Thanks in advance
George

I'm not sure why you can't make a bootable copy of the installer DVD using Disk Utility but as Niel suggests, it is much better to install the OS on a partition on the external drive using the DVD & then use that instead of a 'clone' of the DVD as a boot source to run utilities. There are several reasons for this:
1. You can update the installed version of the OS on the external to take advantage of any improvements, including to Disk Utility, that may be released in the future.
2. The version of Snow Leopard that runs from the DVD is a special one that among other things is optimized for read-only media. For instance, it doesn't write log files to the startup disk since it doesn't expect that to be possible.
3. You can include other utilities on the external & easily customize it to your liking. For instance, configure it for automatic login to an admin user account, drop Disk Utility into that account's login items & it will automatically launch at the end of the boot process. You can do the same with shell scripts or Applescript applications for just about as much automation as your scripting skills & imagination can dream up.
However, one thing to keep in mind: since a HD is not read-only but a DVD is, you can never be as certain that your external is as reliable as the DVD, since it is possible for something to change or corrupt files on the HD but short of physical damage the DVD is immutable.

Disk Utility not finding Hard Drives after Updates

Howdy;
Updated my B&W G3 to 10.4.4 and itunes 6.0.2. After update and restart, ran Disk Utility (DU), which seem to just get into a loop "Gathering disk data". Force quit DU and tried running from Tiger DVD, but similar story.
I have done a little research and there has been many problems with DU linked to itunes 6.0.2 update, but not quite the same (no B&W G3 w/10.4.4 and different DU hang point).
I followed: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1505537#1505537
and even tried moving iTunes to desktop; trashing several iTunes.pkg files; restarting, all to no avail.
Any additional suggestions out there?
Dual 2.5 G5; Mac min; B&W G3 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

I doubt that any jumpers are needed, since this is the only (master) drive in the system. WD's site has pretty good info on this. Verify for yourself however.
Also, from their site:
How to partition and format an internal slave drive or an external drive in a Mac OS X (all versions).
Answer
In Mac OS X, you can use the built in Disk Utility to partition and initialize the drive so it will appear on the desktop.
1. Open the main drive (the drive that contains the operating system).
2. Open the Applications folder.
3. Open the Utilities folder.
4. Select Disk Utility.
5. The drives are displayed on the left side of the window. Click on the drive that you wish to partition (the top drive listing for the hard drive that you want to work with).
6. Once the drive is selected click on Partition.
7. Click on the Options button to select the partitioning scheme.
8. Click on Apple Partitioning Scheme or Apple Partitioning Map and then click on the OK button.
9. You will see several options for setting up the drive. Once you have selected the number of partitions, the format type you want, and a volume label, click the Partition button.
10. Following the completion of this process, the drive will appear on the desktop.
Joe

Unable to delete a disk image and reclaim hard drive space.

I created a disk image on which to store some stuff, and I now want to get rid of the disk image (which is 115 gigs of storage) and reclaim the hard drive space. I'm running Mac OS X 10.8.3. I have been unable to delete it through disk utility. I can only unmount it or mount it, but the storage space remains with it. I can't get rid of it through the downloads folder either, but if I find it in "volumes" via spotlight, and try to put it in the trash, it tells me "ENN.dmg cannot be thrown away because it can't be deleted." I tried using root user to delete the item and it told me I could not because it belongs to another person. My permissions are "read and write." I've searched all sorts of forums. Can anyone help? Thanks!

What error are you getting? Are you dragging and dropping on the trash can or right clicking and selecting "Move to Trash"?
Right click on the image file and select get info. What are the permissions set to.
Can you move or copy it to another folder or a external drive and if you can copy it can you delete the copy?

Disk utility reports smaller hard drive size than actual

I have been using a 3tb external drive (Formatted mac osx journaled) without any problems on my mac mini. Suddenly, it no longer allows me to write to the drive and more often it does not even recognize the drive when it is in the caddy. The caddy supports USB3 and is fairly new. The hard drive is a 7200rpm seagate.
When looking at the drive in disk utility, it states that the drive is 2.2 TB while the size is 3TB.
Does anyone have similar problems? Any recommendations?
Currently on OS X version 10.8.5.
Thanks!
When I insert the drive in the caddy I get the error message that it is not readable. Disk utility reports it as 2.2tb. The drive is a 3TB Seagate.

Hi Eric,
Can't really hook it up directly to a mac mini as the mini is pretty sealed. I did connect it to a PC as I wanted to run SpinRite on it and SpinRite gave me an error message that the Drive Size reported was less than the actual physical drive size.
SpinRite recommended not to perform any actions on the drive due to this discrepancy.
Not sure where to go at this point.
I could try to re-format the 3TB with OS X Journal and see if I get the 3tb back...

Bootable backups - disk utility and which external drives

hi all
(maybe) a simple question
i have been using time machine for my back ups but i am now planning to have a second backup program. i'm looking at using a bootable clone in this regard.
i started looking at super duper and ccc however a few stumbling blokes have just popped up (well at least warning signs that may be of no issue at all - hence this question)
* can ALL external drives be used for bootable backup purposes?
I have a couple of western digital ones - my book essential and my passport.
On the western digital website, it does not have my model numbers listed - does it matter?
Is it a case of any usb connected external drive can be used for intel macs? - i am getting conflicting views on various postings i have seen re this question
second part/question is:
i also understand disk utility can be used for cloning (no updates, just full clones) and as a bootable back up.
if, just for the purposes for having a back up bootable drive, can i set up a clone without too much regard for recloning it (say every 2 months) and if i need to use it, then boot the mac back up with it and then do a full restore using my up to date time machine backups? am i missing something with that method? is that too simple?
feedback much appreciated on these 2 areas
cheers
peter t

Crows2012 wrote:
1) there is no way to make a BOOTABLE clone using disk utility or time machine whatsoever, right? DU will only allow me to make clones and Recovery HD essentially allows me to restore the system (ie software) AFTER booting up?
Correct with respect to TM; all you get is a copy of the Recovery HD.
Disk Utility will make a bootable clone, but there are downsides. First, it can only do a whole copy; unlike a specialized cloning app, it won't copy just what's new or changed, so takes a long time. Second, as I understand it, it won't copy to a smaller volume, even if there's plenty of free space on the internal. For example, if you have a 1 TB internal with only 400 GB on it, DU won't copy it to a 500 GB drive. I may be wrong, but I've seen that posted here by folks who seem to know.
does file b here mean aliases of file b in each backup?
It acts sorta like that, but no.
There's one copy of the actual file, but two hard links to it, one in each folder. The file actually "belongs" to both folders at the same time! The good part of that is, if you delete either backup folder, the other one remains intact. The downside is, how the heck do you count the size of each folder accurately?
that was a great read to understand TM workings and attain some level of piece of mind re my question of incremental v differential backups
It is a bit hard to get your head around! I've been revising and editing that for several years trying to make it clear.
And remember, this only applies to TM as far as I know, at least for consumer-level backup apps.
While it may be possible to boot your computer to an external hard drive, Western Digital does not provide technical support for booting your computer using an external hard drive. If you intend to make a copy of your boot drive, or install your operating system, please use a second internal drive (EIDE or Serial ATA), rather than an external drive.
Yup. WD doesn't exactly have a good reputation for support.
i guess i'll trial CCC or SD and see what happens with the drives that i have re BOOTABILITY
I use CCC myself -- it's a great product with great support.
I downloaded SD a couple of times, but never got around to experimenting with it. Lots of folks swear by it, and say it also has excellent support. To a large degree, it just seems to be a matter of which approach and GUI you prefer, but CCC does allow "archiving" of changed and deleted stuff (differently from TM), and can copy Recovery HDs. I don't think SD does either, but it may have other advantages.
4) and, i think one final question, and a simple/naive one at that.....if my internal hard drive physically collapses then what are the benefits of that bootable clone v not having one?
You can start up from the clone and run normally (but likely a bit more slowly), although you probably won't be as up-to-date as you would after restoring to a new or repaired internal, or an external, from TM. The reason is, running a clone backup, even an incremental one, takes much longer and far more CPU than one of TM's quick incrementals, which it will do hourly if you let it. Few folks using a clone for an OSX drive do it more than once per day, many only once a week.
The downside is, if you run from the clone, you no longer have a backup -- the clone has the only copy of your stuff. That's one reason many folks who use only a cloning app have two (or more) externals with them.
Apart from (obviously) being able to start up immediately to do whatever i wanted to do at the time, after i replace the hard drive (if that was to be the case) are there further expenses or much inconvenience suffered due to not having a bootable drive in getting things all sorted internally on the mac? what is the process in that regard, generally speaking
Just clone the external to the new internal, and you're back in business.
thanks heaps for your time to answer these and previous questions and to build up my understanding of these topics
You're quite welcome.

Disk Utility Not Recognizing Hard Drive - PLEASE HELP!!

So, I just bought this Power Mac G4 from a friend to run my Digidesign hardware. I turned it on this afternoon to install the Apple software for the wireless mighty mouse. When I turned the computer on, the second hard drive was not present in Finder, and I could not locate it in Disk Utility.
I have two hard drives present in the computer ... the 120gb main hard drive and this 2nd internal 80gb hard drive. I'm not very "tech savvy" with the comptuer outside of running protools ...
Does anyone know what the problem could be? Or is it likely that the hard drive just fried??
Thanks,
Justin

When two hard drives are attached to the same data ribbon cable, connected to the same IDE controller, one drive must be configured as "master," and the other drive configured as "slave." This is accomplished by placing a plastic jumper (sometimes two jumpers) across a specific pair (or pairs) of pins on the back end of the drive. If the manufacturer didn't apply a label to the drive with jumper designations, the user manual or manufacturer's web site will have the info needed for that specific hard drive. The drive connected at the end of the ribbon cable should be configured as master, and the drive connected to the middle connector as slave. If the 80 GB drive isn't mounting, it's probably configured the same as the 120 GB, so check both drives.

Tried to reformat Time Capsule with Disk Utility and now no Drive

So, not reading manuals finally bit me in the behind. I was too impatient waiting for all my back up files to erase so I could free up space, so I got the great idea.......I'll just reformat the disk with Mac Disk Utility, NOT the Airport Utility. Now my Airport says drive needs repair, however, there is no option in the airport utility for disks anymore.
Is there anything I can do to get the hard drive back? or am I stuck with a very expensive wifi device now?
Please help if you can.

Which model TC do you have??
What OS are you running? You might find running the older 5.6 utility gives you a bit more control but that is not possible if you have Mavericks.. it can be still installed on lion and Mountain Lion.
Do a factory reset of the TC if you haven't already tried.
The Factory Reset Gen1-4.
Unplug your TC. Hold in reset. and power the TC back on.. without releasing reset for about 10sec. When the status light flashes rapidly; release it.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
Factory reset Gen 5
Hold in reset for about 5sec until the status light flashes quickly.
If your AirPort Time Capsule still doesn’t respond, do a similar reset to the Gen1-4.
Unplug your AirPort Time Capsule .. hold in reset and power the TC back on.. without releasing the reset.. wait until status led flashes rapidly.

Disk Utility and 320GB hard drive

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