Disk utility fails to resize portable drive partitions with error message "requested change in size is too small".

I am using a 1TB WD studio passport portable drive with my 2011 MacBook Pro. I have the portable drive partitioned into 4 volumes: 355 GB, 320 GB, 320 GB, & 4 GB. But Disk Utility won't allow me to split the third of those into 160 GB /160 GB. All volumes verify as seeming "to be okay". Seems if Disk Utility could create me a 4GB partition that 160 GB is plenty big enough, right? Something's not right; Can you help me with this please?

What is on those partitions and or the partition you want to split in two?
If you don't have any data on partitions or if you can save it someplace else for the time being then why not just Re-Partition the whole drive into the sizes you now want.

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Disk Utility fails when formatting a drive

Hi, I have been having problem with Disk Utility when formatting a drive. Every time I format a drive, regarding of what volume format I choose, it will start the format and then fail shortly after.
The drives are then no longer mountable and Disk Utility will not be able to see the drive any more.
Can some one tell me why this is failing? I have only ever experienced this problem on my Mac Pro.
Thanks

Thanks, The Hatter. Sorry I didn't include the internal drive information because so far, I have been using disk utility to format external drives and every time I tried to use it to format, it will fail (have not tried to format an internal drive as I only have one internal).
This is the detail of my internal drive.
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200AAJS-41VWA0
Revision: 58.01D01
Serial Number: WD-WCARW3484394
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
I have tried connecting external drives via, USB and Firewire. Have tried formatting drive to MS-DOS (Fat 32) or MacOS Extended and nothing works.
Please let me know if you need any more info.

PowerShell provider MSFT_ScriptResource failed to execute Test-TargetResource functionality with error message: The expression after '&' in a pipeline element produced an object that was not valid. It must result in a command name, a script block, or a C

I found this article, and used it, and it seems as though my script resource node items are being properly expanded, and honestly I think it passes through being loaded up, but then when I go to start it, it fails. so let me put up some links with code and
error messages for you all.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/2eb97d67-f1fb-4857-8840-de9c4cb9cae0/dsc-configuration-data-for-script-resources
Ok, so here is my configuration. The idea is that I need some specific permissions set on a specific registry key on my sql servers. This is so I can do the SQL LowPriv monitoring. I'm just setting one key right now, premise is once this is working I can
then duplicate that for the remaining keys.
https://gist.github.com/jeffpatton1971/1bfb19a06782f0975f6e
When I paste that into the prompt it appears to be perfectly happy
https://gist.github.com/jeffpatton1971/3aeb568130988a460738
In fact, the resulting MOF file looks ok to me
https://gist.github.com/jeffpatton1971/a94858f0c1e9e5612f90
When I attempt to start the configuration on my local machine, which has the key this is what I get
https://gist.github.com/jeffpatton1971/82da888bb7aac31ef4ad
lol...well so it's a different error now, I removed a credential param that I wasn't using, so now i'm left with an & that I can't seem to find anywhere... at any rate...so now my issue has become where is the bad &?I'm going back to the internets
to see if there is something akin to this error, and i'm open to any questions the most pressing one is why are my scriptblocks all smooshed together? well, early on I was wondering if random whitespace and extra characters were mucking up the waters. I may
actually dial down the script and see if I can add things until I get the error as well.
Jeffrey S. Patton Jeffrey S. Patton Systems Specialist, Enterprise Systems University of Kansas 1001 Sunnyside Ave. Lawrence, KS. 66045 (785) 864-0242 | http://patton-tech.com

I looked at the first link, and it looks like you might be missing quotes around the $Node.ActionAccount part of the comparison, which would cause the script block creation to fail. Maybe change the sections that look like this:
Where-Object {$_.IdentityReference -eq $Node.ActionAccount}
to this:
Where-Object {$_.IdentityReference -eq '$Node.ActionAccount'}
If you're looking to do permission changes with DSC, I'm actually looking for testers for my
PowerShellAccessControl module. The 3.0 beta has two DSC resoruces: cAccessControlEntry (lets you make sure an ACE is present or absent) and cSecurityDescriptor (lets you specify an SDDL string for an object). The current cSecurityDescriptor is going to
be called cSecurityDescriptorSddl in a future release, and a new cSecurityDescriptor is going to be added that lets you control the different sections without using SDDL. If you were to use it, I think you could change your configuration to the following (at
least for the permission part):
Configuration SQLLowPrivRegistry {
param(
[string[]] $ComputerName = "localhost"
Import-DscResource -Module PowerShellAccessControl
Node $ComputerName {
cAccessControlEntry TopLevelActionAccountPermissions {
Ensure = "Present"
Path = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\"
ObjectType = "RegistryKey"
AceType = "AccessAllowed"
AccessMask = ([System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryRights]::ReadKey)
Principal = "DOMAIN\SqlDefaultAction_sa"
What you're doing should work just fine, so I'm not saying you need to use mine. If you do get a chance to look at it, though, please let me know what you think (or if it even works). There are two scripts in the examples folder of the module that demo more
with the two resources (hopefully that will do until I finalize the documentation).

Disk Utility won't resize a partition

Disk Utility won't resize (eliminate smaller partition from a 2-partitioned internal) Hard Drive. This is the message I get:
"Partition failed
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled."
Help files offer no information on this error. I followed the Help instructions to do this operation, but the resize doesn't work. The older, smaller partition shows up in Disk Utility but is dimmed out. It will activate at highlight, but is not recognized on the desktop.
Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?

Intel based Macs use a different partition scheme called GPL or GUID rather than what PowerPC used, APL.
You could try reformatting, or get a new system, and run BootCamp and Windows even.
Even if you've used Macs for years, there is always a place on my book shelf for this one, David Pogue's "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (Leopard Edition)"
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/02/27/1551206.shtml

My Macintosh HD partition is damaged and the disk utility failed to repair it

I cannot boot anymore after I tried to repair the disk with Disk Utility after my Mac became very slow.
This is the second time it happened to me in a week with the same symptoms. When I try to boot, I see a gray screen and the computer just stops
When I use the recovery partition, the disk utility fails to repair the disk, stopping after failing to fix the catalog file.
I started to use TM to backup my data after erasing the disk and reinstalling Mountain Lion but I wonder if my hard drive is damaged because the same problem happened twice. (Thanks TM for keeping my data safe this time)
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
PS : The worst is that i can still boot with Bootcamp to Windows, not very useful though

rpignard wrote:
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
Since your Recovery HD and Windows partition work fine, the problem is located in your Macintosh HD partition and I very highly suspect it's bad/failing sectors that's to blame for your troubles.
This can sometimes occur if the computer was moved while the hard drive was in operation, else sectors fail all by themselves, or if the drive is having mechanical issues, which you problem will continue no matter what you do.
This time when you use Recovery > Disk Utility to erase the Macintosh HD partition, use the middle secure erase option, not the far left or right options (the right will work also just take a really long time)
What your doing is with the middle secure erase option is called a "Zero" write, which Disk Utility will write 0's over all the bits in that partition. When it's done it will read it back for confirmation and when it does so, any bits that are failing will be mapped off by the drive. Hopefully this will resolve the issue without needing a drive replacement.
Once that is completed, reinstall OS X from Recovery, any programs from original sources, files only from backup and your problems hopefully should disappear.
What happens is if your data gets corrupted on the boot drive by failing sectors, it gets transfered to TimeMachine (or to bootable clones) and when you restore your right back to square one. So it's important to rule out that possibility with original installs of OS X and third party programs.
If your problems continue, then it's possibly a problem with third party at boot kernel extension files, (and the catalog problem was yet another one) so to solve this you need to make sure all your third party software is updated and works with your current OS X version.
A trick is, if you get gray screen at boot time, is to hold the Shift Key while booting the computer, this will disable a lot of things and allow you to fix the third party software issue.
What I suggest you do is have multiple backup systems, including hold option key bootable clones, this way if your TM drive gets corrupted you can go back in time to a saved state on the clone, restore that and then your files from the TM drive.
Most commonly used backup methods

How to recover after performing an 'Erase' and then 'Partition' within Disk Utility of an External USB drive?

Hi - I accidently ran an 'Erase' and then 'Partition' within Disk Utility of an External USB drive (meant to run it against another drive that was plugged in). Does anyone have any suggestions on if it is possible to recover from this? It has all my family photos on it and my backup is a few months old :-(
I tried running Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery but it found what looks like basic mac folder structure (probably from the first erase). I think what messed me up was that I rain the repartition which formats the drive a 2nd time! Any help is truly appreciated!
thank you,
-Steve

Hello RalphR_MI,
Take a look at this page, which lists several articles. Please let me know if any of these help you restore your backup.
Also, take a look at this article, as well as this one.
I hope this helps. I'm not sure of a few things, so I'm sorry for sending you so much, but I'm confident it will give you something new to try.
Please let me know if this helps. Good luck!
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Disk Utility - Solution for a Weird MediaKit Partition "too small" Error

I found a very suggestive article, could be a silver bullet for this kind of problem.
*http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=760190*
+*quote from SWedd*+
+In my case, it was caused by the Apple_Bootstrap partition (created during Ubuntu install), of format unknown to OSX. This partition was positioned right after my Macintosh_HD partition. To enlarge my Macintosh_HD I needed to use diskutil to erase the Apple_Bootstrap partition to a blank "MS-DOS" partition. Then I could use Disk Utility to Delete the MS-DOS partition. After that I could resize my Macintosh_HD freely.+
In my understanding, if you failed to increase the size of a certain partition, it might mean a partition just after that partition is corrupted or broken (whether or not it is corrupted, you can know it by using command "diskutil info ...").
With command "diskutil eraseVolume ..." you can erase the partition in question, then with "diskutil mergePartitions ..." merge the partition you want to increase in size and the partition you just erased. Now you can increase the size without any error.
Anyway, diskutil can do several things which Disk Utility can't do.
To resort to diskutil is sure worthwhile.
Message was edited by: Shigerello

Welcome to the Apple forums and thanks for the information.
Warning:
The terminal command
diskutil
should be used with care, as with most terminal commands.
A good rule to remember is "If you do not know what something will do, do not do it."
For information on diskutil, in a terminal enter
man diskutil

Disk Utility Not Formatting External USB Drive

Hello,
I recently upgraded to Leopard.  Around this same time, my company purchased two, 1 Terabyte USB External drives for my coworker and I in the graphics/web development department.  They arrived this morning and we were very excited.
My problem is that I cannot get Disk Utility to erase/format the new, external USB TB drive for use with my MBP.  Disk Utility fails almost immediately with the following message:
"*Disk Erase Failed*
Disk Erase failed with the error:
File system formatter failed."
The options I'm choosing for the Erase are:
Volume Format: MAC OS EXTENDED  (i've even tried the 'journaled' version too)
Name: TB
As soon as I hit 'Erase' I get the error message I listed above.  The volume never mounts on my desktop and does not exist.  I can see the drive itself in the System Profiler, so my Mac sees it, it just can't format it!  I've also made sure all my permissions were repaired, so I'm just a little confused as to why this simple task keeps failing?
Is there some additional, esoteric step that I'm missing?
My coworker was able to get his disk to work because he did NOT have Time Machine turned on yet.  When he connected his new TB drive, Time Machine asked him to format/initialize the disk and he of course said "ok."  I had Time Machine set to use my OLD external USB drive and it's been working great. As of this writing, my coworker is a happy camper. I, however, am not.  I'm not blaming Time Machine, just noting the differences between my coworker's experience and my own. Since the volume is not currently mounted on my machine, I can't format my disk the same way as my coworker has done using Time Machine, since Time Machine doesn't see the volume.
My fear is that the manufacturer (whom I've also contacted and am awaiting their response) will throw this back to a software problem....and the folks on the forum here will point their fingers and say 'hardware problem.'  Ah, the eternal struggle.....who to blame?
Any help or additional troubleshooting tips are greatly appreciated.

This is the best, and only, way to format an external hard drive, which is courtesy of Kappy.
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X 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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
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.

Using Disk Utility to Erase an external drive freezes Disk Utility?

When I use Disk Utility to Erase an external drive, Disk Utility freezes indefinitely and the action is not performed.
How do I fix this?

To use it on your MBP you need to set the OPTION when you partition it so that it will be the Intel GUID partition scheme, then set the partition(s) you want.
If it is hanging or failing, that can be caused by bad sectors where the partition table has to be written. You might need to zero the drive. If you have a PC, then use Maxtor's tools to reformat and test the drive.
PPC Macs use one partition/format scheme, IntelMacs use another, and Windows a 3rd.

Iomega external HD no longer mounting, disk utility fails to resolve issue.

I have an Iomega external HD (1TB) that's been working faithfully for two years as my time machine backup. I have Mac OS X 10.6.8. This morning, the HD was no longer showing up on my desktop. I have tried to mount the HD through disk utility and it states it is unable to mount the drive. A screenshot of what I see on disk utility is below. The drive still lights up, sounds like it is running and the drive is active. I have also done the following:
1. verfied drive; states it needs repairs. When repairs attempted, utility goes on, and on, and on with no progress and I have to force quit.
2. Have reset the PRAM and nothing changes.
3. Have started mac in safe mode, still not recognized and same error messages given in disk utility.
4. Other external HD works fine on mac, have not had any software changes/updates since yesterday that I know of that would affect anything.
5. USB and Firewire ports all functioning correctly and the drive is recognized on those under system profiler.
5. I have attached the problem HD to my Windows XP laptop (an old one but still works) and the drive is recognized under device manager but does not show on the desktop (formatted for mac though, so not too surprising).
Would appreciate anyone's advice on this one, have hit a wall.

Turn off Time Machine, select the 1TB ST310005 Media Drive instead of the Time Machine partition and see if it will Repair.
If that doesn't work, you might Erase / Repair / Format and start over providing that there is nothing critical on the Time Machine backup that you can't live without.

Disk Utility Failed, Mac HD not working and cannot reinstall OSX

Hi,
I am totally frustrated.
Was working on capturing video using Final Cut Pro and the application froze. After repeated attempts, I kept getting the message to restart the G5.
I tried reinstalling Final Cut Pro - and installation failed. I ran disk utility first aid and found an error on the Mac HD (Startup Disk). So I restarted machine from the DVD (pressing the C button when restarting) and ran disk repair from the DVD OSX Utility. Still got the error that "First Aid Failed" Disk utility stopped repairing Macintosh HD because the following error was encountered. The underlying task reported failure on exit. HFS volume checked 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error. Repair attempted on volume 1, 1 volume could not be repaired.
Then I tried reinstalling OSX onto a second internal SATA HD. Installation failed. Try installing again.
So now what do I do?
I am running Mac OSX 10.4.9
Please help...urgent.
Thanks
MQ

Thanks for the answer...that's what I was thinking.
The following are various issues I am considering maybe the cause:
1. Memory - I installed 2GB a few weeks ago - third party.
2. External HDs - I installed an external Maxtor 1.5TB drive 3 days ago.
3. I live in Africa - and power frequently gets disrupted - even though the machine is on a "solatek" (power stabilizer and high end protector against spikes) - 2 days ago my UPS was down and for repairs - and we had three power outtages.
Lastly, as I mentioned I live in Africa - Mombasa - Apple tech support is almost non-existent here...so I am hoping I can resolve this without having to ship it abroad.
Please help and thank you...
MQ

HT1782 disk utility wont fix my hard drive please help!!! it has assignments on it

hey i usually use disk utility to fix my hard drive problems of been invisible, but lately, doing disk utility and repairing the disk doesn't seem to work anymore? do you guys have any other suggestions, its a seagate go flex hard drive

You need to boot to recovery mode to repair the boot drive (partition containing the operating system). Hold cmd+r on boot up, or hold the alt key and select recovery when you are given the options of what partition to boot to.

Keys out of order, disk utility fails

PowerPC (?, whatever came just before Intel-based machines) iMac running 10.3.something failed to boot - hangs at "Logging into OSX" window but never gets there to log in. Booting from Install CR-ROM and running Disk Utility fails to repair Catalog. Booting in single user mode results in "Keys out of order (4, 51882)" "The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired". Also tried to boot from Prosoft "Data Rescue II" CD-ROM but no help
Any suggestions to repair/recover?
Files all appear to be there - can navigate around in Unix and list them. Also have external Lacie hard drives connected (unconnecting does not resolve problem) - Would there be a way to cp or rcp some key files to these external drives to at least recover some?

Welcome To  Discussions jeff_st!
If all else fails, and you have access to another Firewire enabled Mac, you can also use Firewire Target Disk Mode, to backup as much data as possible.
Then reformat the HD, zeroing all data, and perform an Erase & Install.
ali b

Disk Utility Failing to Repair HD

I ran Disk Utility this morning from the Tiger installer CD for the sake of general maintenance. It failed, returning this:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
I've been searching the forums here, but most of the similar posts seem to dealing with newly-installed hardware, or a disk with a S.M.A.R.T. status "Failing" (according to Disk Utility's Log window). Neither of these is the case. Has anyone seen this before?
Single 1.8 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi, Space Toast.
To add to Al's advice, see the "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk" section of my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Is Disk Utility in OS X 10.8.2 the version of Disk utilit that controls the Fusion Drive on new Imacs?

is Disk Utility in OS X 10.8.2 the version of Disk utilit that controls the Fusion Drive on new Imacs?

No. Only those computers with a Fusion Drive installed will get the special version of Disk Utility. Do a Google search if you want to find out how to create a fusion drive with older systems, but I suggest it's a waste of time.

Disk utility fails to resize portable drive partitions with error message "requested change in size is too small".

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