Disk Utility gives wrong info when formating

Disk Utility has no problem formatting disks, but the bar at the lower right hand corner shows "Preparing to erase" all the time, requiring force quit to close the program. The problem has persisted after deleting disk utility preference. Advice on a fix will be most welcome.

To help isolate where the problem is, the first step should be...
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
Does that do the same thing?

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Trying to install/format an INTERNAL hard drive using Disk Utility gives me "Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device". Is that a hardware problem and what could be done about it?

*** PLEASE NOTE*** - This is a query about an INTERNAL HDD not an external one. Thanks.
My Mac is a late 2009 model and the current hard drive recently failed. So I bought a new one, exactly the same, albeit 750gb instead of 500gb. The HDD is a Seagate Momentus 7200. Before the my current drive failed I made a time machine back up to an external USB HDD. I've inserted the HDD into the bottom of my Mac, plugged in the USB and started my machine pressing the 'Option' ([ALT]) key. I go into Disk Utility to try and format the new HDD by creating a new partition but I keep getting the messages,
"Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device"
or
"POSIX: could not allocate memory"
This is actaully the third HDD I've tried. The first was another Seagate Momentus 7200 500gb, but this time it was a newer model (model number ended in 423AS instead of 420AS - the new one I am trying ends with 420AS, which is the same as the current HDD). I then tried a Western Digital drive but that one didn't even show up in DU. Forums and tech support are suggesting it's faults with the HDDs but surely not three in a row?
Could this be an issue with another part of my Mac?
Is there anything else I can do to format the HDD, have I missed a crucial step?

Did you ever get a resolution to this issue?
I am having that exact error with a new 512GB SSD from Crucial, in a 15" MBP mid-2010.
I really wonder now if the stupid SATA cable could be bad - causing the initial SSD fail. I am replacing it with the EXACT same drive, and getting that "last block" error when i partition in the GUI or from command-line.
thanks!

RAID 5 and Disk utility problems - wrong volume size for formatting

Hi ..
I seem to have an odd problem with setting up our new RAID 5 solution. We just bought the SR6600 with seperately bought Western Digital 750Gb servergrade SATA disks.
Through the console I configured the RAID set to be RAID5 with a total capacity of 2750Gb and with a volumeset of 3000Gb (4 discs capacity and 1 disc parity).
Here's the problem:
When I'm trying to format the new volume for HFS+ usage, I open Disk Utility and it shows the volume, but the capacity is only 750Gb - similar to 1 disc's capacity. I find this odd and I've searched all over the net for a solution and answer.
Please advice if anyone know of any management software, explaination, etc.
Much appreciated, thanks!

I've run into the same issue with a newer PPC XServe. However, after I tried to reformat, I still only show up with the orginal size, and not the new size, even after I restarted the server and XRAID.
Did you have any success with your reformat?

Can't open disk utility at startup, can't format new hard drive

My hard drive on my 2011 macbook pro recently went out, so I purchased a new one. I plugged it in internally and brought up disk utility in internet recovery, but it didn't recognize the drive. So I tried using an external hard drive reader, but now recovery mode can't be accessed at all, whether I press option or command r after startup, it still gives me the same gray folder with a question mark icon. Is my recovery mode damaged, and is that possible to fix?

You can use an external USB disk/flash drive which has Recovery (or a full OS - requires a 16GB disk space on a USB flash or a JHFS+ partition with the OSX) on it. Boot from that recovery USB drive. if Internet Recovery worked once, the MBP is already capable of repeating it. It requires an Ethernet or WiFi connection. If neither is available, or is spotty, Internet Recovery will not work. Can you try Internet recovery via Ethernet cable, if all your previous attempts have been via WiFi?
If the drive is not recognized when plugged into the internal SATA bus, either a cable is not plugged in properly (the replacement drive never showed up successfully as per the OP even once, or the drive is DoA). It should be tested externally. Pulling the drive out and putting it back is fairly easy in the 2011/2012 MBPs. The cable could have been damaged during the replacement. The non-drive end of SATA/IR Sensor cable on the main logic board could be loose or damaged.
If you have a external cable SATA-to-USB or SATA-to-FW (very unlikely), format the new drive using a different PC/MAC to make sure it is not DoA. What brand/model is this new drive? Is it an SSD? It may require a FW upgrade.
If there is a second MAC available, a Target Disk Mode boot (press T while powering up the mac with the new drive) may allow the second working mac to format the new drive via Disk Utility.

Disk Utility and diskutil unable to format or verify or repair

Hi there,
Wondering if anyone can give me troubleshooting ideas on this one:
When I try to partition or format a usb drive (actually I tried 3 models), Disk Utility does the partitioning part but just hangs (soft hang, I can still close it) when comes time to format the partitions. The progress bar just stops in the middle and doesn't move anymore.
I get this message repeated a few times in the system.log file:
diskmanagementd(1367) deny network-outbound /private/tmp/esets.sock
I eventually tried to repair my main HD, thinking that it might be a perms issue but I get a similar problem - it starts to verify and then just hangs there forever. So this issue applies to both format and verify as well as repair. and it applies to USB devices as well as SATA devices.
I was able to repair using the recovery partition but the problem remains intact.
I also tried all the operations with the command line equivalents - always the same thing, either format, verify or repair just hang forever but can wasily be killed.
Given the above log message, I am thinking that diskmanagementd may have lost the permissions it needs to write out of it's andbox - anyone have a clue how I can fix this or if I am in the right direction ?
Thanks !
Phil.

Linc Davis wrote:
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Disk Utility won't let me format external drive to FAT32

Maybe this cannot be done or the answer is simple and I am missing it. I have a 1.5tb Maxtor drive hooked up via fw800. I want to have 120gb of this as Mac OS extended journaled to back up my internal drive via Time Machine. I want the other 1.38tb to be in FAT32 so I can share files between my windows and mac machines. I keep all of my external storage except for the backup partition in FAT32. I have never had an issue until I upgrades to Leopard and now when I click on the larger partition I only have the option for the 4 mac formats-- FAT32 is not available. I can format the entire 1.5tb to FAT32 but once I try and partition it only mac formats are available. I forgot to mention I just did the upgrade to 10.5.1 and the issue is still present.
How do I format the smaller partition as mac os extended journaled and the larger as FAT32? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks so much,
Patrick
PS. I did a search but did not find anything.
Message was edited by: PatrickB

It may depend on the type of partition table scheme you are using (see bottom of page in disk utility for that says Apple Partition Map/APM, GUID Partition table/GPT or Master Boot Record/MBR partition map).
MS-Windows can read MBR scheme only (64 bit MS-Windows supports GPT, according to MS). If you have Apple Partition Map, your disk won't be usable on Windows. I suspect you have APM partition table and hence the disk utility is not giving the option for FAT32 format, since you can't use it under MS-Windows.
On the Mac side, all 3 schemes are readable (for bootability, you'll need APM on PPC Macs, GPT for Intel Macs). Time Machine doesn't need a bootable disk, but I'd suggest APM/GPT if you are using PPC/Intel macs respectively (but I'd think either will work for Time Machine, if you have a mix of Macs).
But here's the catch - Apple says Time Machine won't work with drives with MBR partition map (even though Macs are MBR-aware), so the issue for you is Time Machine's ability to use MBR drives. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306932
I suspect unless you are on an Intel Macs (OS X) and use only 64 bit MS-Windows (using GPT)/Itanium, using the same disk for TM and FAT32 sharing between Mac and Win worlds is not possible. Not the desirable answer.
If you do want to experiment, make a temporary setup and try it out on both Mac side and Windows side first (on all your machines), before making a "production" system. You can select the DISK (first line on Disk Utility for that disk, not second line) and click on Options at the left bottom (it might have to be erased first) and then select the type of partition scheme. Note formats like HFS+/FAT32 are a level lower in the hierarchy than partition map/table.
Let us know what you find out/decide?

Disk Utility: Reporting wrong size for disk after a restore

First up, hardware is G4(PPC) running OS 10.4.11
I've just purchased and installed a new 500G drive for this old workhorse as an upgrade for the previous secondary drive. Set it up with a single partition, JHFS+. No problems so far. Went to copy the files from the old drive to this new one and thought, "Why don't I try that handly looking Restore button?". +Yeah, apparently a bad idea+. The old drive is 120GB. I set its (only) volume to be the source and my newly created partition to be the target; set it going and left it alone. All appeared to be well when I came back, until I checked the available space on the new drive.
Disk Utility now reports that this new, 500G drive has a Total Capacity of 128G (137,438,952,960 bytes).
*Remedies tried so far:*
- I've tried reformatting/partitioning, but wasn't able to convince it otherwise. Also tried it booting from an install DVD just in case that made a difference.
- I downloaded a utility from the drive manufacturer which I managed to get on to an ancient, dusty w2k box. Reformatted the drive with 2 NTFS partitions. This seemed to do the trick as they both mounted when I rebooted the Mac. However, when I went to reformat the volumes to JHFS I noticed that the total disk size was still being reported as 128G. Still, they reformatted fine and I transfered my data to them. On a reboot, though, the Mac decided that it didn't want to see the second partition and only shows me disk1s10, ignoring the second partition I set up.
- I have an identical, empty drive to the 500G. I thought I might be able to use the Restore "feature" to trick it back. Set up the second 500G in a firewire box, ran the restore from the empty volume to the screwed up one. No dice.
I thought that OS X ignored any sort of BIOS info on a drive and merely looked at the physical media. Is this correct? Does it store this gathered info in a file somewhere that I can delete?
*This is a call for help.*
I have no problems playing with the command line as root, if that's the sort of suggestions you've got. I just thought I'd ask here before I fdisk/dd etc from new500 to old500. Geometry of the new500 is 60801/255/63.

Thanks! That sounds like a good short term solution for a backup.
EDIT: Cross reference link for anyone who happens to google this thread with a similar problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7230072&tstart=0
Message was edited by: mr_lunch

Both my MacBook Pro Retina Display and new iMac will only format an SD as FAT16 using Disk Utility. How do I format in FAT32

I have a new iMac and MacBook Pro with Retina Display running 10.8.2
When I use Disk Utility on a San Disk 2GB SD card I can only format as FAT16. How can I format the card as FAT32?

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Disk Utility says "no options" when I try to partition

Hi,
I have a flat-screen IMac G4. I want to partition the hard drive. When I open disk utility and click on the drive I want to partition, I get the partition tab, but everything is grayed out and it says "no options." Can anyone tell me how to proceed to partition? I want to restore another, smaller hard drive on the IMac, hopefully without erasing everything. This would be sort of an archive of the hard drive that's already on the IMac. It's old stuff that is not currently in use.
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks

You have to boot using your install disc. See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh14.html
You posted in the OS 9 forum. You should post in the iMac or Tiger 10.4 forum. See http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa?categoryID=1
 Cheers, Tom

Disk Utility partitions wrong physical drive?

I have two firewire drives... one is daisy-chained to the other. Let's call the one attached directly to my iMac as DiskOne and the drive that's plugged into DiskOne we'll call DiskTwo.
So, I was resizing partitions on DiskTwo using the Disk Utility in Leopard 10.5.2. It's pretty obvious in the interface what physical drive you're on. The resizing of DiskTwo went fine. Looks great.
Afterwards, I then realized that DiskOne had been repartitioned as well. Yikes! 28,000 photos and my iTunes library gone. Poof!
Like I said, the interface in Disk Utility is very clear... I never took action on DiskOne... and yet it's now "empty".
Lesson Learned: Only have one physical drive plugged in/turned on when repartitioning.
I'm optimistic that professional disk recovery will be able to get my files back for me. Didn't use secure erase, nor has anything been written to that drive since.
Just wondering if anyone else has seen this? And if you've "accidentally" partitioned a drive, is there a Apple or third party utility you'd recommend to get those files back?
Thanks!

unfortunately, the nature of this kind of thing is that all directories, file names, and other descriptive info are all gone.
Even if I find my iPhoto library files, they'll be useless as they contain pointers to images files that no longer reside in original directories with their original names.
A data recovery tool just finds every file it can, names it something generic and unique, and in this case, throws all .JPGs in one folder, all .MP4s in another, etc.
Not fun... and reiterates the fact that you really can never be too careful even keeping multiple backups... because even though there's a very high probability that even though all 28,000 photos were found in this case, I'll likely never be whole again b/c I'm gonna hafta sift thru 100,000 recovered .JPGs to attempt to find them. And that's not including the whole out-of-whack iPhoto database that describes files in locations that no longer exist and cannot be recreated.

Disk Utility detects wrong size on my external FW disk...

I have a external firewire disk that I want to use with my macbook pro. It is a Maxtor Onetouch. It has previously been used with linux and had some ext3 and xfs partitions on it. Works like a charm on win/lin and is detected as a 250GB disk. But when I hook it up to my macbook Disk Util says it is 128GB only. I can create a 128GB partition on it.
I have 2 external disks. I have previously changed the HD inside both of those boxes without any problem on win/lin. The HD in question is a WD 250GB disk I just bought. I tried to put it in my Lacie FW enclosure only to see that it is still detected as an 128GB disk

Did you format it using the GUID partition map selection? AFAIK, MS-DOS and FAT-32 format might be causing your problem.

Disk utility gives "Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size"

I am getting the following error when running Disk Utility (under ML) on an exteral USB hard drive:
Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size.
I get thsi when I ask Disk Utility to "Repair Disk" at the top level of the disk hierarchy (i.e. not on one of the partitions within the disk but on the disk itself). I was not getting this error with Lion on the same disk before I upgraded from Lion to ML.
It seems like a bug in ML. I found websites where they suggest that you just run Lion's Disk Utility and it will show the disk to be fine.
Any thoughts?

So, I finally seemed to have resolved things with the Seagate 4TB Firewire external drive. If you Google about, you will find a thread on Seagate's own support forum that describes how to disable the sleep function on the drive. You CANNOT ALLOW THE DRIVE TO SLEEP WHILE CONNECTED TO YOUR MAC.
After a lot of reading, here's what I think is happening: the drive goes to sleep, after some period of inactivity, and when you shutdown your Mac, OS X tries to write something to the drive as part of the dismount / disconnect / shutdown process. That fails in some manner, leaving the drive 'corrupted' at the filesystem or partition level.
Then, on the next boot-up, Mountain Lion tells you that it cannot repair the drive and it mounts as read only. Your only fix at that point is to re-partition / re-format and start over (which is big fun with 3TB of data to copy back on to the drive).
If you prevent the drive from sleeping, whenever it's connected to the MacBook, then the above process doesn't occur and voila, the drive just works. So far, I haven't had any problems with about a week of starting / shutting down my MacBook connected to the offending drive (translation: I was going to return the drive, but the problem is clearly with Mac OS X Mountain Lion).

Disk Utility "Input - Output error" when attempting to erase Hard Drive

Hope that someone can point me in the right direction.
I bought an external hard drive for Windows a year back and loaded music onto it. I realized that I my MAC wasn't getting "Read / Write" privileges for the External Hard Drive, so I decided to try to Partition it and make it into a FAT readable device. It erased all data from my hard drive, but Disk Utility stopped the process and displayed an "input - output error".
Consequently, I can't initialize the external hard drive to make it usable on my MAC.
Can anyone point me in the right direction so I can "reformat" my external?
Thanks!

Hi all,
I'm having similar issues on a white macbook (2006 model). I ran into some trouble with it about a month ago, when on booting up, it showed only the folder with a question mark. Booting up from the original grey install DVD worked, so I thought the problem was most likely a faulty hard drive.
It's only after having this problem, that I came across this recall for possible faulty hard drives, that Apple offered:
http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/
Doh! Too late?
So, I got onto ebay and picked up a deal and received my new hard drive yesterday. I swapped out the original 80GB with 320GB, only to find the same input/output error described by the OP, here (also in a couple of other Apple discussion posts - see below).
Disk utility shows the new hard drive to be 2.3TB in size! Should be 320GB - but, this is also what others have described. See e.g.,:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16090313#16090313
I've run the extended testing from the CD (holding down 'D' on boot-up) and it reported no problems. Also, similar to others experiences:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16081818#16081818
So, what can the problem be?!?!?!?!?
In this post, JMPC suggests it has something to do with the size of the new internal hard drive....groan.....:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16145560?tstart=0#16145560?tstart=0
Can anyone confirm this?

Disk Utility gives wrong info when formating

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