Disk utility wont format external drive

Hi all
I have a friends 1 TB toshiba external drive, purchased at office works. I am trying to format it for NTFS so he can use it to watch the movies he is copying on any machine, xbox etc..
using disk utility I am erasing the 1tb drive with the NTFS format option, then I am creating the partition with NTFS but after formatting, it is only allowing me to read. I have tried formating the hard drive with Mac OSX journaled and then creating the partition at 1tb with NTFS, but getting the same issue.
I am a little confused as I just did the same thing with my 2TB drive I purchased from Office works as well.
any ideas?
bret

Hi Bret. I am not sure I fully understand the details of your problem - the mention of another drive (the 2TB one) confused me a little. I'll try to help though because it doesn't look like anyone has had a chance to reply to your question yet.
As far as I can see, OS X doesn't write to NTFS formatted drives by default. It appears you can enable it by altering the mount options, e.g. http://learnaholic.me/2013/11/11/enable-ntfs-write-on-mac-os-x-mavericks/
Alternatively, perhaps just formatting it as FAT32 would achieve your aim - although now that I check, it doesn't really look suitable as it has a 4GB file size limit and some of the movies could be over that.
Hope that helps.
Ivan

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+2009-04-28 22:12:24 +0100: Preparing to erase : “ReadyNAS”+
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I can reformat it as FAT32, no problem.
Any clues? Thanks!

Use the "partition" tab in Disk Utility, set it to "1 Partition" click the "Options" button, and choose "GUID".

Using Mac Disk Utility to format external hard drive

Now that I’ve got the LaCie d2 Quadra and am ready to use it, I’m looking for a little guide to using the Mac Disk Utility to format it.
Can anybody point me in the right direction?
many thanks
BAC
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Message was edited by: BAC

Roger and captfred are correct, you will still need to reset both the _Partition Map Scheme_ to GUID Partition Table and the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Connect the External HD and open Disk Utility in your Utilities Folder.
2. Highlight the External HD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab.
3. Under Volume Scheme select _1 Partition_ and click on the Options... button.
4. Select GUID Partition Table in the drop down window and click OK.
5. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), name it and click the Apply button.

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
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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.

How did Disk Utility make my external drive undetectable?

Greetings all,
It all started when I dropped a running external hard drive (WD My Book Essential) onto the floor.
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Any help regarding this issue will be appreciated.
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2012-11-14 16:49:29 +0800: Starting verification tool:
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Hope this helps

Bootable backups - disk utility and which external drives

hi all
(maybe) a simple question
i have been using time machine for my back ups but i am now planning to have a second backup program. i'm looking at using a bootable clone in this regard.
i started looking at super duper and ccc however a few stumbling blokes have just popped up (well at least warning signs that may be of no issue at all - hence this question)
* can ALL external drives be used for bootable backup purposes?
I have a couple of western digital ones - my book essential and my passport.
On the western digital website, it does not have my model numbers listed - does it matter?
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if, just for the purposes for having a back up bootable drive, can i set up a clone without too much regard for recloning it (say every 2 months) and if i need to use it, then boot the mac back up with it and then do a full restore using my up to date time machine backups? am i missing something with that method? is that too simple?
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peter t

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

Using Disk Utility to format jump drives to work on a PC?

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Dude,
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Glad I could help. Thanks for the s.

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I have a drive that has just suddenly started to not be recognised by the system. It's a pain but no big deal as I didn't have much on it. However, I don't want to just give up on 200GBs of space and tried to erase/partition it. Nothing happens though, the progress bar fills up by about 2mm and then hangs, left it overnight, everything. The thing is the drive is still seen by DU, so does anyone have any other suggestions or recommendations for recovery software? Any help would be mucho appreciated....

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A couple of backups (don't put all your eggs in one basket), too.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/
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http://www.speedtools.com
Sorry TimeMachine isn't current.
The first time you have a hard crash is when you want to do Safe Boot or FSCK, or boot from an alternate drive immediately and trash the most recent temp and cache files (web browers etc).
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Did you remember to empty the trash can? If not, the file is in the hidden directory .Trashes on the Windows drive. You don't reclaim the space until you empty the trash.

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Hi all
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!http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5019/picture2csm.png!
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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.
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Thanks for all the comments. It looks like my drive is heading to the big round up in the sky. But I am able to copy the files off of it to other drives . So I went out and bought a new drive which I am using. My new question, which is related, I use this for my Time Machine files. Is there a way to migrate those files to the new drive, or do I just start over from zero? Thanks

Disk utility wont format external drive

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