Disk Utility reading incorrect HD size - cannot format disk

I have a 250 GB external SATA drive, which I want to format for use with Time Machine. I had a power failure in the middle of the format to HFS+, and now disk utility reads the drive as a 2 Terrabyte drive rather than as a 250 GB drive (and cannot format it or mount it).
Does anyone have ideas on how to regain access to this drive?
Thanks in advance.

Thanks neutron. I am trying that now - Disk Utility tells me that it will take 25 days and 19 hours to complete the erase, but I'm willing to let it run.

Similar Messages

  • 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?

  • Disk Utility not functioning properly, unable to format disks

    Installed Mountain Lion last week and am now trying to format a flash drive, but Disk Utility no longer has the ability to do anything at all.  I can open it and look at my disks, but that's all I can do.  All functions have essentially been locked out.  Help!

    Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
    The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
              SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
    from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
              View ▹ Show Log List
    from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
    Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take the action that isn't working. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
    The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
    Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
    Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
    Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

  • I am now using 10.6.8.  Downloaded Maverick but cannot update OS on HD because get message the disk is not formatted as Mac OS extended(journaled).  Tried to use Disk Utility as per instruction but cannot complete operation.

    I am now using 10.6.8.  Downloaded Maverick but cannot update OS on HD because get message the disk is not formatted as Mac OS extended(journaled).  Tried to use Disk Utility as per instruction but cannot complete operation.

    Barney-15E:
                   The partition method worked after some trepidation.  I got the spinning beach ball after partitioning and couldn't go further till I named the second partition.  That may have done it.  Right now, things seem to be working o.k.  I'm updating a current iPhoto and will have to get a MS Word program that will function on the current OS and a current  Quicken.
    If necessary, can start up from the 10.6.8 system which I downloaded to an external HD before updating.  I can always fall back on that.  Also, I hope I don't get too many disconnects.  Thank you for your help.

  • "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility."  Trying to format my iomega external HD for use with Mac

    Hi. Trying to connect iomega ext. HD. i have to reformat for Mac. When i plug in & go to Disk Utility,the external shows up and i'm supposed to click "partition". When i do, a box comes up saying ""Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." I quit and relaunched, same results. After googling my question, i came up with this:
    "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility."
    (Quitting and reopening Disk Utility does not help.)
    The following also appears in Console log:
    *** malloc[419]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x290a410; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug : for architecture i386 object: ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes malformed object (unknown flavor for flavor number 0 in LC_UNIXTHREAD command 27 can't byte swap it)
    Workaround
    Quit Disk Utility.
    From the Finder's Go menu, choose Go to Folder....
    Type the following, then click OK: /Library/Receipts
    Temporarily remove these iTunes receipts from /Library/Receipts (sort the folder alphabetically as a list):
    iTunes.pkg
    iTunes4.pkg
    You can put them on the desktop, for example. Do not remove iTunesX.pkg or iTunes Phone Driver.pkg.
    Open Disk Utility and repair disk permissions again.
    Quit Disk Utility.
    Put the removed iTunes receipts back in /Library/Receipts.
    Note: This issue does not affect Disk Utility's verify or repair disk features.
    All seemed good, for a moment, until, upon going back to Disk Utility after removing itunes4.pkg and putting on desktop (i did not have itunes.pkg to remove) the same thing was happening. When i highlite my iomega ext. on left of page, disk perrmissions is grayed and does not allow me to click on it. Same problem from the start. Can somebody please help me out here? That would soooo awesome. Thanx!

    i'm just scared i will do something wrong on my own and lose my data.
    You shouldn't be scared of that, because you should already have backups. If you don't have backups, then backing up is the first priority.
    Insert the Snow Leopard DVD and restart. When you hear the chime, hold down the C key and keep holding it until the Apple logo appears on the display. You should now see the language selection screen. Select your language, then choose Utilities > Disk Utility from the menu bar. In the Disk Utility window, select the external drive (not the internal). The drive may already have a data partition, in which case there will be another icon below the drive icon. Choose the drive icon, then select the Partition tab. Create a single partition with the default options (GUID partition table, Mac OS X Extended Journaled).
    When the partitioning is done, select the startup volume on your internal drive in the DU window. Select the Restore tab. Drag the icon of the startup volume to the "Source" field. Then drag the icon of the newly-created volume on the external drive to the "Destination" field. Make sure you have this right. Then click the Restore button, and the data on your startup volume will be copied to the external drive.

  • Disk Utility says everything's fine, but Install disk doesn't find my internal drive as a possible destination. When I startup with Command   S, I get a looping "cannot mount errno = 19" message.

    Disk Utility says everything's fine, but Install disk doesn't find my internal drive as a possible destination. When I startup with Command + S, I get a looping "cannot mount errno = 19" message.
    Problem started when I used Tech Tool Pro 6 to "de-fragment volume". Had to cancel that process before it finished because I ran out of time. Thereafter, when I startup my machine normally, I get the gray Apple logo at first, but it changes to a prohibited symbol (circle with a slash thru it) and hangs.
    When I startup holding the Option key, I can see my internal drive, but I get the same results as above.
    When I startup using the MacBook OSX Install DVD, it does not find my internal drive as possible destination.
    When I startup using the MacBook OSX Install DVD and then run Disk Utility, it finds my drive, allows me to "repair" and says everything is fine.
    When I startup with Command + S, I get a looping error message "errno = 19" and cannot stop it to do anything else.
    When I startup from Disk Warrior v4.4, it does not find my internal drive to do any repairs.
    When I startup from Tech Tool Pro 6 and run the "computer check" diagnostics, everything passes but the Volume Structure, which fails at "Volume Extents (B-tree)." When I use TTP's "Tools" option to run "volume repair" it will show my internal drive and allow me to click the GO button, but nothing happens and nothing changes.
    I have a Time Machine backup on an external USB drive, but for as long as the internal drive doesn't mount, I can't use the backup to restore.

    It's a false report and should be ignored.
    I would not rely on TT as I've already said earlier even before Grant posted similar advice.
    I really think the Rigid Disk Block may be corrupted. This holds the partition map and could prevent a volume from being unmounted. Unfortunately, there is no way to fix that without repartitioning the drive which will remove everything. So, before going down this road I hope you have backups or can make a backup.
    Drive Partition and Format
    1. 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.
    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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
    4. Quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed with reinstalling OS X.
    5. Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

  • Disk Utility - New Bundled SparseDisk volumes cannot change view

    Running SL 10.6.1 on a early 2009 Mini.
    Through Disk Utility, I created a new Sparse Bundled Disk Image with 256bit encryption. That is no problem, except I cannot customize the view of the mounted image. The default is icon view, with no toolbar at the top of the window. I want to have the regular array of toolbar icons at the top of the image and view it in column mode, but when I manually change this, it doesn't apply to the mounted disk image window.
    Older disk images I created in other OS versions mount and display just fine, but I cannot figure out why this is a problem in SL.
    Any thoughts or fix suggestions? Greatly appreciated!

    "Rather poor that the originator cannot edit the original post?"
    You can edit your post for a limited amount of time after it's posted. See the edit button at the bottom right after you post. Then hit the blue Update button at the very bottom.

  • You can't use The following message is stopping me access my disk utility.  'this version of the application "Disk Utility" with this version of OS X.'  not only that my Mac pro keeps dropping my internet connection and logs on to BT Open.

    After installing Yosmite, The following message is stopping me accessing my disk utility.  'You can't use this version of the application “Disk Utility” with this version of OS X.' you have “Disk Utility” 12.1.1. 
    not only that my Mac pro keeps dropping my internet connection and logs on to BT Open.
    Help

    For whatever reason you don't have the Yosemite version of Disk Utility which is 13. I suggest you reinstall Yosemite.
    Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive
    Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. 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 main menu.
    Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.
    Download and install the 10.10.1 update.
    Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
    Check that you have the current version of Disk Utility.

  • I used the "erase free space " option in disk utility and now my imac says the disk is full and wont let me download songs. please help!

    i used the "erase free space " option in disk utility and now my imac says the disk is full and wont let me download songs. please help!

    You could try repairing permissions with disk utility, I don't think you will have the option to repair the drive but you could verify it.
    This may help you delete the files that DU made but did not remove when erasing the free space.
    http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/317204-no-disk-space-after -failed-disk-utility-erase-free-space.html
    When you get your SL disk it will not have the iLife applications, that would have been on the second install disk that should have been with the computer. I forget which version of iLife you will need for SL but I think it is this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-iLife-Single-User-Mac/dp/B003XKRZES/ref=sr_1_1?ie= UTF8&qid=1409607702&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+ilife+11
    A search of the forums will confirm or deny this.
    As to whether a clean install will cure your problem, i.e. partition the HDD and install I would expect it to be yes, but there are no guarantees it is an old machine.

  • I have repaired startup disk in disk utility but still get message saying startup disk needs repair, help.

    I am on a macbook pro running the latest version of yosemite. I was going to use Onyx to clean it, but I got a message stating that my startup disk needs repair. I command R went to disk utility to verify and repair and the disk was fine. However, I still get the same message when using Onyx. What should I do? Should I command R and reinstall? Will the fact that my startup disk needs repair cause a problem?

    Thank you @EricRoot, I think you may be correct. I don't get that message with other programs. However, I did locate files on my computer taking up way too much space...

  • I need help on my MacBook Pro. Recently I've deleted another partition of my disk from the disk utility and I found out that my disk capacity wasn't get into the normal one which is 750GB. Meanwhile I installed window 7 into the partition disk.

    I need help on restoring my disk capacity back to normal. I installed window 7 into the partition disk through bootcamp and I deleted it from disk utility. After I erase the partition disk,I get my capacity to 499GB but not 750GB. Do I need to reinstall my MacBook or something to do with the restoring?

    Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
    Rodney Lai wrote:
    I installed window 7 into the partition disk through bootcamp and I deleted it from disk utility
    You shouldn't do it. You have to erase the Windows volume with Boot Camp Assistant, so it will restore the space onto the OS X volume and that volume will have 750 GB.
    As you did it with Disk Utility, you have to resize your OS X partition manually:
    1. Open Disk Utility, select your hard disk at the top of the sidebar, and go to Partition tab.
    2. You will see a bar with Macintosh HD. You have to click it at the bottom right corner and drag it to the end of the bar, so Macintosh HD will use all the space of the hard drive, and press Apply.
    3. Close Disk Utility and your OS X partition will have 750 GB

  • My external HD stopped showing up on my desktop, but shows up in my Disk Utility.. I have tried a disk verify and repair - sometimes that works and completes, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, it wont eject or mount, and still doesn't show up on desktop.

    My external HD stopped showing up on my desktop, but shows up in my Disk Utility..
    I have tried a disk verify and repair - sometimes that works and completes, sometimes it doesn't.
    Either way, it wont eject or mount, and still doesn't show up on desktop.
    There are no ticking noises coming from the hard drive, and it lights up still, and i have tried replacing the cords, and restarting/shutting down the computer, and have tried it on a mac desktop also - same problem.
    Any help would be great!!!

    and have tried it on a mac desktop also - same problem.
    Try this on one of the Macs ...
    Open a Finder window. From the menu bar click Finder > Preferrences
    Select the General tab then select:  Show External Disks

  • Disk utility shows incorrect size

    When I open disk utility on my 2011 macbook air it shows that I have used 181gb with 68 free. But when I right click on my Macintosh HD and select Get info it shows that i have 215gb free and I've only used 34gb. *** is going on. My SSD should be 256 minus overhead/recovery. But these numbers are way off. And yes i have tried to reboot and clear my trash can/cache files.

    I figured it out. It was the /.Mobilebackup folder that's taking up all the space. turned off localbackup and it wiped out the directory and cleared up the space. But i'm not sure if this is a good idea. It does give my all my space back in disk utility which is the same result as get info from my hd. These commands helped out a lot
    df -H
    sudo du -cxhd 1 /

  • Disk Utility -- Smallest (minimum) partition size

    I viewed an earlier discussion on this topic that was answered incorrectly, but I couldn't add this information to it because it had already been archived. However, I was unable to find it anywhere else on the web, so I thought it important to get on the record.
    Disk Utility in Leopard DOES enforce a minimum partition size. It is 1GB.
    This is documented in the Apple Service Training course "Leopard Tools and Techniques."

    V.K. wrote:
    it looks like DU will not allow you to create a partition smaller than one tenth of the disk size.
    when i do it on a 200GB drive the smallest size it let's me make is 20Gb, and for a 500GB drive it's 50GB.
    I guess that's a safeguard against creating too many partitions.
    Message was edited by: V.K.
    I thought so. Like most filesystems, all the information must be stored in the bootsector or whatever it's called with BSD, and the total number of files is related to the sizes and total numbers of partitions, so like FAT32 or even NTFS, HFS has it's practical and theoretical limits.
    I believe HFS has two bootrecords or equivalents, one for backup and this adds to the storage space issue.
    Going back to the old 1.44MB floppies, the unformatted size was over 1.7 MB and Norton and MS took advantage of that, but not all disk readers were happy with what they did. MS once shipped Windows on a set of 1.7 MB floppies. Of course this was BC (before CDs).

  • Disk Utility in Internet Recovery mode cannot properly detect new hard drive

    I intend to format my new hard rive and install OS X into it.
    Here is my problem, I bought a new 1TB HGST 7200rpm hard disk and put into the macbook. I boot up under Internet recovery mode, under the disk utility I tried format to MacOS Extended Journaled but it takes ages (stuck for more than 15 minutes). I simply just cannot get the macbook to read the drive under disk utility from Internet recovery mode.
    Here are the things that I have tried:
    1. Boot the MacBook from old drive, successfully use the disk utility to zero out format (MacOS Extended Journaled) with 1 partition (GUID). But when I boot the Mac under Internet recovery mode, the disk utility simply cannot mount the drive.
    2. Restore the new drive (as an external drive) from the old drive using disk utility, successfully restore. I could startup the new disk as an external drive, but when I put it into the Mac it shows flashing folder. I waited for more than 30 minutes, the flashing folder just stays there.
    3. Boot the MacBook on Internet recovery mode and connect the new drive as external drive, no problem. I reinstall OS X into it but it midway it stop and error message says something like cannot add additional components.
    Not sure what is the problem, I think I have exhausted all method. There is no issue with the new hard drive and MacBook.

    The MacBook is early 2013. It came with 1TB Mountain Lion, I left the DVD in my country so I don't have it with me. How do I download the installer? the Mac App Store only lets me upgrade the OS to Maverick.
    I have tried to restore the new drive from my old drive, but the only way is to use Internet Recovery. The Disk Utility boot from the old drive OS (Mountain Lion) does not allow me to restore my new hard drive from the old (current boot) drive, the message instruct me to use the Internet recovery mode. From here I can see my new drive format as GUID, but when I boot to Internet Recovery the Disk Utility recognised my new drive format as Master Boot Record instead of GUID...?????

Maybe you are looking for