Disk Utility hangs attempting to erase SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk

I'm attempting to erase and format a SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk. Disk Utility hangs. The system error log says:
"AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
Jul 21 17:30:35 Kari-Hohnbaums-Computer-2 kernel[0]: USBF:"
The console log (and Disk Utility log) shows:
Preparing to erase : “PBEX1”
Creating Partition Map
error writing partition map: Device not configured (6)
Disk Erase failed with the error:
What is the problem? This disk is recognized by Tiger but only as read-only as it ships as an NTFS volume and must be erased and reformatted before it can be used by a MAC.
All help appreciated.

I tried the partition approach and it unfortunately failed as well. The same "hung" symptoms as before. The green light (disk activity) on the disk flashed several times at the initial request, but that was all. I eventually interrupted it after a hourn which generated the same system log message: AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
The disk utility log says:
Preparing to partition disk: “SAMSUNG HM100JC Media”
Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Scheme
Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers installed
1 partitions will be created
Partition 1
Name : “PBEX1”
Size : 93.2 GB
Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Creating Partition Map
Partition failed for disk SAMSUNG HM100JC Media Device not configured
Partition complete.
I don't have easy access to a Window's box. I do have access to a Linux system. Perhaps I can configure it there and it will work on my PB.

Similar Messages

Disk Utility will not format/erase/partition an unformatted scsi disk

Well, I'm back with a RAID problem again. This time the powers that be sent me a Sun Microsystems StorEDGE A5200 RAID box (22 33gig disks). It's a fibre channel system, and is full of Seagate FC disks. The box only hooks up to my G5 Quad via the Apple Fibre channel card that I have hooked up. It's a dual channel card and both are plugged into the back of the RAID array.
Now, here's what I have.....
The Drives show up in both Disk Utility and Anubis
The is only one drive formatted and it works fine.
All the rest of the drives are unformatted (not just blank, but without any operating system on them, just like they were fresh out of the box)
Attempting to Erase a disk results in the message
Disk erase failed
Disk erase failed with the error:
Invalid Argument
Attempting to Partition a disk results in the message
Partition failed with the error:
Invalid Argument
Attempting to create a RAID set results in the message
Creating RAID set failed with the error:
Could not add a RAID disk to a RAID. (note there was no other RAID set)
Only one disk in the array is formatted and it will respond to all of the functions in Disk Utility.
I was told that I needed to do something using the command line, but that was pretty vague as to what I needed to do. Apparently I need some sort of superuser authority to get these drives formatted, and that's it's not documented any where.
So folks, I leave it up to you again, what do I do?

OK, I have found out much in the last few weeks.
1 - Apple no longer supports SCSI, you may not format disks in any way using OS X. OS 9 also does not work on any of the G5 machines at least.
2 - You can use Linux to do most of the work with SCSI, it is still supported, although there is little clear documentation on how to get it done. Linux is free and works very well with my G5 Quad. But it has a steep learning curve and it's not worth it for just formatting SCSI drives.
What I found out about my SCSI drives turned out to be the core of all the problems I have had, and it was Linux that found the problem. Seems all of the drives I have but one have been formatted in such a way that only the proprietary operating system that formatted them would read them. 520k data blocks. I reformatted several of the drives to 256k blocks and they work fine now.
Before I go out and start going though this for a few hundred more of these drives, my academic supplier found just as many drives that were specifically formatted for use in Sun RAIDs and are properly recognized by OS X, and with twice the drive space (current is 36gig, new ones are 73gig). He is sending me 44 of them (and a second RAID box)
I'm hoping that this finally solves the problem and hope all will be working soon.

Lion Disk Utility doesn't finish erase

Since installing Lion (clean install) disk utility doesn’t finish erasing or partitioning external disks. I used the disk utility from the install drive to erase the internal drive before installing Lion, this worked fine, but ever since it failed to erase any of my external drives. It starts of as normal but the progress bar stops half way and just never finish. Disk Utility does respond.
I tried different format options, repair and verify but none of the processes finish.
I went back to the install drive that I used to erase the internal drive before Lion install and it also didn’t want to finish.
I copied the old disk utility from Snow Leopard to my desktop, it opens with a warning, but gives the same outcome.
Any advice?

I'm having the same problem on my late 2010 Air with Lion installed over Snow Leopard.
I've tried several usb memory drives and several external harddrives...all the same problem with the progress bar getting stuck halfway. wether I select 'partition' or 'erase'.
the 'genius' at the mac store told me that he advises a clean install of Lion. I did...or I thought I did but all my files were still in place and the problem was still there. Guess I will have to wipe the drive first.
Also, unable to repair permissions on the MAC drive.
But it is remarkable how few people seem to experience this problem thus far. A google search hardly returns any results.

Disk Utility hangs ("not responding") when attempting to Repair Disk on Time Capsule sparsebundle. Help.

I am trying to improve the performance of my Time Machine backup and retrievals via my 2nd Gen. Time Capsule from my iMac Core 2 Duo hard drive with SL 10.6.8. The incremental backups generally take 20 - 40 minutes each hour generally with fewer than 100 MB of data being backed up. I have read through numerous threads on these forums about Time Capsule and Time Machine issues as well as the very helpful Pondini site (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html) and have tried many other suggestions (listed below), but have been unable to attempt a Disk Utility repair disk on the Time Capsule sparsebundle file.
After locating the sparsebundle 'file' in the finder under Shared/TC/Data, I am only sometimes able to drag the sparsebundle into the Disk Utility volumes and disk window. About fifty percent of the time, Disk Utility hangs when attempting to drag in the sparsebundle. If I am able to get it listed and click on "repair disk", then the beach ball begins to spin and nothing happens. This occurs whether or not I first use AirPort Utility to "Disconnect All Users" from the Time Capsule. I have given it over one hour to attempt the repair disk, but nothing happens, i.e., not a single message shows up in the detail window. The beach ball just spins, and Disk Utility shows up in red as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu.
Also note that on my new Macbook Air, Time Machine runs quite quickly via this same Time Capsule from my new Macbook Air using OS X Lion (which seems to indicate that the Time Capsule drive itself is OK).
I would appreciate any tips on getting Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my sparsebundle, as I seem to have exhausted most other options (see below) for improving Time Capsule performance -- aside of course, from wiping the Time Capsule clean and starting all over.... (which I really don't want to do, and from what I've read, has not helped some people who've tried this anyway).
Many thanks!
Although I would like to focus this thread on the Disk Utility / sparsebundle "Repair Disk" problem, I should mention that I have tried the following other things:
1. Repaired disk permissions on my hard drive
2. Used Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my hard drive after starting up from a SuperDuper external backup
3. Run DiskWarrior on my hard drive, again, from a separate startup disk
4. Did the "full reset of Time Machine", a la Pondini Troubleshooting #A4
5. Changed my computer and Time Capsule names to simple short names with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces
6. Ensured that my Time Capsule is being accessed only via ethernet
7. Relaunched the finder
8. And finally, attempting to use Disk Utility to repair the sparsebundle - thus the nature of this post

OK, no takers out there, but I answered my own question (sort of).
The answer is that even though Disk Utility shows up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu and appears to hang, it is actually still working. A bit of patience shows that after about an hour, my Disk Utility was able to show the 1.44 TB Time Machine sparsebundle from Time Capsule in the disk window on the left hand side. Once this appeared, I was able to click on "Repair Disk" (note that prior to doing this, I had to "Disconnect All Users" from my Time Capsule using the Airport Utility program; otherwise you will get a "could not unmount disk" error). Again, the Repair Disk function appeared to hang Disk Utility as it showed up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu. However, after about 8 hours, Disk Utility did run the entire Repair Disk protocol on the sparsebundle. The results DO NOT show up in the Disk Utility details window - so even if you are patient enough to let it complete, you will not see anything and may think that nothing happened. However, you can find the familiar results of the Repair Disk function by looking on Console - find the "DiskUtility.log" under Files: ˜/Library/Logs.
Unfortunately, I was hoping to find a problem that would have been subsequently repaired which would result in dramatically increased Time Capsule speed, but this was not the case. Disk Utility showed everything to be "OK" and I am stuck with a very slow Time Capsule....
(And of note, my new Macbook Air (OS Lion) Time Machine functions blazingly fast on both backup and retrieval to and from the very same Time Capsule - even though, these are occuring wirelessly via AirPort -- granted the size of this sparsebundle is an order of magnitude smaller at this point, i.e., only 10 GB right now)
Would still be happy to hear of any similar experiences or tips on getting Time Capsule to work more quickly.

Disk Utility hangs when erasing external disk

In Time Machine I wasn't able to figure out how to attach an external drive via USB. I guessed that it probably wouldn't work on a MS-DOS filesystem, so I started Disk Utility, which I never have used before. I have formatted disks before on Linux and on Windows, so it's nice to see a great app for this.
In the Time Machine brief help text, there is not mentioned what kind of filesystem that is required or if it work with any filesystem. So I searched, and it seems as if HFS+ journaled case-insensitive is the filesystem that one should choose. Can anyone confirm this?
When I click erase then the Disk Utility program hangs and I see the spinning beachball. The Activity Monitor program shows that disk activity stops after a few seconds. There is no more activity, so after 5 minutes I stop the program.
I have tried several times, and I see the same behavior. I even tried restarting the computer. But no luck.
Now my external disk no longer shows that it's a MS-DOS filesystem, but shows that it's HFS+ journaled case-insensitive. Probably not ok so far. I try creating a single patition, with format: HFS+ journaled case-insensitive, without OS 9 drivers installed. When I click apply then spinning beachball again and diskactivity stops after a few seconds, and I stop the program after some minutes where it has been inactive.
My guess is that the disk-erasing task failed and has left the disk in a broken state. During this task Disk Utility began to hang for a reason that I don't know.
My second guess to why the create-partition task failed, is that the disk is in a broken state, and thus the partition cannot be created, and Disk Utility hangs.
How do I format the external disk from the command line?

In Disk Utility, select the drive mechanism (not the volume on it) and click the Partition button. Use the Options button to choose the GUID partition scheme, then make one HFS+ (Journaled) volume.
There is no point in using the command line for this task, because if Disk Utility cannot deal properly with the disk, Mac OS X will not either. Disk Utility is using diskutil to do the partitioning and formatting.

Disk utility hangs MAC G4?

Why does Disk Utility hang when starting? ~ Doug

Hi, Doug.
A little more detail on how you are launching Disk Utility on the stated "G4" would help. Some more details about the specific G4, and the problems that may have led to you attempting to run Disk Utility on it would also be useful.
Try running steps 1-2 of the Procedure specified in 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.

Can Disk Utility's seven-pass Erase feature do unfixable damage?

I have begun posting about this under a different HD topic, but thought I would open a new thread as this would seem to be an important issue not much remarked on. If anyone has any ideas how to fix this, they are most welcome. First, my cautionary tale.
About ten days ago I removed a lot of financial data from my laptop. I also had consolidated all my passwords into a program called Pastor, so I removed the other insecure files where this info was previously stored (like from my email client, and from a word file). When I emptied the Trash, however, I neglected to use the Secure Empty function, and was suddenly seized with anxiety lest my laptop fall into the wrong hands. So I opened up Disk Utility, and clicked on Erase Free Space, using the 7-pass process which is highly secure.
DU warns you that this process will take 7 times longer than the single-pass erase (makes sense), and when it started up, it gave an estimated time as 4hrs something. When I got up next morning, some 14 hours having passed, it was still working. I just couldn't wait any longer and hit the Stop button. A warning came up saying, "Interrupting this operation may damage a disk or render it unusable." That sounded so extreme that I discounted it. I thought Apple was being a bit Nervous Nellie about it--I mean, all it's doing is writing zeros all over the thing, what's the big deal? BAD IDEA.
What I didn't understand was that the seven-pass process doesn't empty your HD, it fills it up. With zeros, to be sure, but it fills it up. Upon completion, if I understand correctly, it resets itself so that all those zeros are read as empty space. If you interrupt it before completion, it does not reset and sees all that space as full. NOT GOOD.
My HD was now sluggish, programs were quitting unexpectedly, some wouldn't start, and others gave the Error-50 message. Worst of all, Word was saying "can't create or save this file because memory is almost full" or "Cannot save file. Your disk may be damaged or write-protected." And yet the system profile indicates 40GB of free space.
I have tried the following: Repair Permissions (from the Home HD); repeating the Erase procedure using single-pass to completeion; resetting PRAM; Safe Boot and then Repairing Permissions from within Safe Mode; changing Startup Disk to my external and running Repair Disk and Repair Permissions from there; rebooting and running Repair Permissions from the Home drive once more.
That was my latest attack on the problem. Repair Disk is finding no problems, and Repair Permissions is finding nothing to repair. At this moment, the computer seems okay, and maybe this is over. But several times in the past week it has seemed okay only for the problems to start up again, which is why I'm writing this now in case I'm looking at complete drive failure in a day or two. Here are my questions:
Has anyone here had experience with an aborted 7-pass Erase function? Does it truly damage the disk?
Should I try running the 7-pass Erase again, this time letting it go to completion no matter how long it takes? (In order to make sure it properly resets.) Or is that risking making things worse?
Is there some other diagnostic test I cam make to determine just wherein the problem lies?
Am I looking at buying a new HD (the current one was expensive and is only a year old)?
I always get good advice from this forum, so I'm hoping someone knows what to do. Any advice much appreciated.
Giles

DiskWarrior is your best bet for curing Disk Problems that nothing else can.
Other than that, if you can afford to erase and reinstall...
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, 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.*
3. Click the Erase tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Highlight the drive, select Erase Tab, then Format type... MacOS Extended Journalled, select the Security Options button, choose Zero Out Data, Erase... after completion hopefully you'll be able to have a clean install.

Disk Utility Hangs during format

Yes, I've seen a hundred other posts on this but all have been archived with no solution.
It seems very likely there is a 10.4 problem. When I try to format a 160GB drive connected via USB Disk Utility hangs and never completes. I have tried to partition it as well with no luck.
Is there a fix? Is Apple working on the problem? Is there a workaround? Even a commandline fix would be acceptable.

This is ridiculous. I have tried 4 different physical drives in 4 different physical enclosures (3 different brands) and it still hangs Disk Utility.
I know I'm not the only one with this problem. What the **** is going on? I can't format a disk and therefore I can't use it. This is absolutely unacceptable.
Sometimes my machine hangs in such a way that I can't even reboot it, it requires a physical power down.
I have been forced to format these on a Windows machine with FAT32 (using a 3rd party app to get past the GB limitation MS sets). I don't want FAT32, I want HFS+. But I can find no other way to do this in Tiger as it ALWAYS hangs regardless of drive, enclosure, filesystem type, size, number of partitions, etc, etc.
Is OS X truly this bad that it can't even format a drive properly? Am I really going to have to rely on Windows and FAT32 whenever I want to format?

Disk utility hangs during disk verify

Initially 'disk verify' registered errors on exit - minor error/issue it said,some kind of header problem, so I ran disk utility off the install disk. Now the machine's native version of disk utility hangs during disk verify, blue & white spirals forever.
This coincidentally straight after my gmail/google address/account was hacked a couple of days ago.

Have you tried booting in SafeBoot mode (shift key held on start
until login screen appears) then launch Disk Utility and then run
its 'repair disk permissions' item, selecting the Macintosh HD;
and then note the repair window. It should fix something.
And when Disk Utility is done, quit it, and restart the Mac normally.
{...It is unlikely something from gmail affected your computer unless
you open up unknown sourced emails or go to odd web sites where
something may be downloaded from there, which you would almost
have to install (as admin, etc) for malware to work. You can get and
try ClamXAV for free to see if it sees any malware virus content.}
If you use Gmail, and do not log in using the https:// (secure http)
you should change the habit and bookmark the secure login site.
And when booted from the Installer disk and running Disk Utility
from there, see about running "repair disk" and not verify. The
repair choice will verify; but verify will not repair. Could be if
you cannot use the Utility to Repair the issues, and the other
SafeBoot mode and the computer's Disk Utility to get it working
you may need to further troubleshoot and/or get third-party tools.
In any event...
Good luck & happy computing!

Disk Utility hangs up

Running a G5 IMac with 10.5.1. Tried to repair permissions and Disk Utility hangs up at about 25% of the way through the process. Ran Disk Warrior. Still hangs up. Started up form Leopard Install and tried to repair permissions. Still hangs up. Otherwise the system seems to be running OK. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Disk Warrior is NOT compatible with Leopard at this time.
I would not use my Disk Warrior.
Permissions take from 10 to 30 minutes with 10.5.1
Give it time.
It seems like it just sits there on "Less than 1 minute" but it will eventually finish.
Again, give it time.

HT1379 I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do?

I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do? The problem began when I tried to restart my computer and the only thing I saw was the grey screen, Apple logo, and the timer; the computer wouldn't restart from there.

I searched through trouble shooting options on the Apple Support page and was able to make it this far.

Disk Warrior/Disk Utility Hangs with External HD

okay, so i will try to make this as quick as possible.
last year, i had an external hard drive that i had been saving all my audio work on. one day i had to restart (i was having a lot of problems with my then IBook G4) so i did, and the drive was no where to be found. made sure there was no connection problems (ie my USB ports) and everything seemed fine. let it sit for a while, thinking maybe it was just tired or something. tried again, same story, and it also made disk utility hang. tried it on a friends mac, same issue.
i also had a a lot of video/music that i watched with my xbox 360. i could still access those files with the xbox, which was weird.
so then my ibook eventually died, and here i am with a newer G5 quad. i tried it again, and still the disk utility hangs, and ive also tried Disk warrior 4. this also hangs.
also, i have tried switching the enclosure to no avail.
its not the end of the world if i cant get the data back, but i would REALLY like to.
any suggestions?

System Profiler shows the same thing: "Manufacturer: PI-236" for each of these HDs. I'm not sure how to rename these drives (I'm not talking about the partitions on them, which I've given descriptive names).
The strange thing is that on my MacBook Air (upgraded to Lion) one of these HDs (now connected via USB) shows up in Disk Utility as "Ext Hard Disk Media" instead of "PI-236". Still not a whole lot of information, you'll notice.
Another external HD (partitioned earlier under Snow Leopard) is shown correctly as "SAMSUNG HD501LJ Media" on both computers.

Disk Utility hanging on all user accounts

Hi,
I suspect that my son applied new permissions to enclosed items somewhere and that this is the reason that Disk Utility hangs (doesn't respond) when I start it. As a remedy I repaired permissions while started from an external disk and then applied some command lines that I learned for resetting user account permission (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1655174&tstart=0). But still DU is unresponsive and must be force quit. Additionally I cannot open the DVD tray and Firefox tells me "...update available but you do not have the systems permissions required to install it....".
So I think my user permissions reset was not successful. My question is: did the command line language change from Leopard to SnowLeopard because Terminal gave me some feedback that "-H makes sense only with R" or something to that effect.
Do you have any idea about these things? What's the best way to proceed? Thanks.

Has command line language changed in SnowLeo compared to Leopard?
There are a few changes that reflect the differences between the two OS versions but the vast majority of commands are the same. There are hundreds of commands. Including the flags, switches, & options available for them there are thousands of variations. Plus, characters like spaces, slashes, dashes, & quote marks have special meaning depending on where they appear in the command line so even a minor typo can dramatically change a command into something other than what you want.
Because of this, you should not use a command unless it is specifically recommended for an issue you have explained completely or you have at least a fundamental understanding of command line syntax & the options for a command you are going to use. Each command has a manual page ("man page" for short) that you can access in Terminal by typing the word "man" followed by a space followed by the command name. For example, try "man man" to see the manual page explaining that command.
It would help greatly if you could provide the exact command & flags you used, plus any error messages they generated. Also, "standard procedures" doesn't tell us much since different users consider different things standard.
I suspect your problem is not caused by mis-set permissions, although they may have lead to the condition that caused it. But without more info it is hard to say what the problem is or how to fix it. It might be simplest just to reinstall the OS (which for Snow Leopard is not that big a deal), let Software Update bring it up to current versions, & then deal with any remaining user level permission issues separately.

Disk Utility unable to burn discs on an external

I recently bought a Pioneer DVR-K05 (I accidentally broke my SuperDrive). So far, I have used it to open a CD in iTunes and run StarCraft, yet when I insert a blank disc (I've tried both CD-R and DVD+RWs), and try to show them on Finder, a popup appears, saying "The disc could not be used because the disc drive is not supported. (Error code 0x80020025)".
Disk Utility notices the blank discs exist, yet, I can't burn an image onto the discs. Clicking the Burn button takes me to the burn options screen, saying the only optical drive available is my SuperDrive. Also, nothing in the First Aid, Erase, or Partition tabs can be clicked, and the only thing clickable in the Restore tab is the Source text box and the "Image..." button.
I've been trying to burn images for several days, and yesterday, somehow, I finally got Disk Utility to burn an image. Then I quit Disk Utility, and today, I can't burn anything again. Anyone have a solution on how I got it to work yesterday, or how to fix the problem altogether?

Have you tried using the Patchburn utility?
BTW, welcome aboard!

My HD needs to be reformatted according to Disk Utility, but even when I use an external device for startup, Disk Utility cannot reformat the HD

I have a Macbook with a 500 GB Hard Drive. A routine check on Disk Utility told me the disk needed to be reformatted. I restarted from an external USB drive, but when I try to use Disk Utility to repair the HD or to reformat it, Disk Utility is unable to do anything with the HD (cannot repair, cannot erase,cannot reformat the HD). Is there a utility App that can help me with this, or is the HD unrecoverable?

Hi
Thanks very much for your reply. We have been starting up from a backup (USB) drive and use the disk utility that is on the backup drive so the internal (problem) HD is not being used for anything (except for wanting to repair it). Still Disk Utility cannot reformat or repair the drive. I have also run Onyx but it tells me everything is OK on the drive.
But I have made a little progress. Using my old install disk for Snow Leopard (10.6.3) I have managed to do a fresh install of the system on the internal HD. Unfortunately, I also asked the install disk to transfer/migrate the settings and documents from the backup drive back onto my internal HD. The install appeared to work, but then it got hung up on copying the documents from my backup drive to the HD. After letting it sit for 2 days without going anywhere, I stopped the install process. I am going to try again, just using my Snow Leopard CD to install Snow Leopard, and nothing else. If that works, I will then get on to the problem of copying the rest of the settings and documents from my backup.
But since the Mac works OK off the USB backup, and will also run off the install CD, I am guessing the problem is with the HD and the only solution might be to replace it if I can't repair it. But the macbook is several years old, and I am not sure it is worth buying a new HD for it.

Disk Utility hangs attempting to erase SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for