External 1TB HD Not Erasing

I just bought a new 1TB External HD and it won't allow me to erase it and format it Mac OS Extended Journaled. It will only format MS-DOS Fat. I would leave it that way except that it won't allow me to work with really big files. I get an error every time I try to erase and use anything other than MS-DOS Fat. I have tried repairing the drive... won't work unless it is MS-DOS.. well you get the picture... basically I am unable to use it for anything unless it is setup MS-DOS... anyone seen this before.. what should I do to fix it.
Thanks in advance...
Rob

Thanks, guys.
I read the linked post this morning, and have been thinking about whether to leave my disk as it is, or try partitioning it again. Just got home from work, and followed the instructions.
Although I'd managed to delete the FAT and NTFS partitions and create 2 Mac partitions, the disk was still set to use MBR. Changed it to GUID, selected single partition, and it worked perfectly.
Seems a bit odd to me that, when you select Mac journaled as your FS, it doesn't at least prompt you to switch to GUID (whatever that might stand for). As a fairly recent switcher (2 and a bit years), I'm continually getting the impression that Apple try really hard to make their kit easy to use for the man in the street, but, as soon as you want to do anything even remotely "techy", they dump you straight in at the deep end with the "oily bits" of the OS.
Still prefer OS X to XP any day, though.

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Hi djsi,
Unfortunately I think its hard to say something because here its a Toshiba user to user forum and you should ask this in a PS3 forum for example.
Nobody knows what PS3 and firmware you have and what kind of HDD you have.
So just ask a PS3 expert or in PS3 forum. There you should get a proper answer. ;)

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Hi there,
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1. Quit iPhoto
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Hi,
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Try connecting it to a different computer to see if you can access the data, under no circumstances should you Initialize the drive as all existing data will be lost.
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if you have a spare slot).
J W Stuart: http://www.pagestart.com
Never be afraid to ask. This forum has some of the best people in the world available to help.

External hard drive not recognized after time machine locked up

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Thanks for the help

KTM450rider wrote:
Do I need to boot from the install DVD?
this is often the easiest and eliminates any "busy drive" problems. what's wrong with booting from the install DVD? takes a couple of minutes.
My main hard drive is OK... the drive that I am having problems with is an external hard drive that I was using to back up my lap top. I just want to get the external drive reformatted, but disk utility will not erase it. I get an error that disk utility shut down, "please check the drive and make sure that the drive is not in use or programs are still running"
Is their a way to do a hard or forced reformatting of an external hard drive, I don't care about the information on the drive
I also tried disk warrior to recover the info on the disk and all it does is crash my mac pro????
Thanks again for the help

Seagate external hard drive not connecting to Mac

I plug in a Seagate GoFlex 500GB external hard drive into my PowerBook (specs at bottom of post). I go into Disk Utility to try to resize one of my partitions so I can back my Mac up. I click the final "Continue" button, and a few seconds later I get an error saying that the partition was not completed correctly and that the drive was removed. It was not. It shut itself off briefly (less than a second because I saw the light (normally always on) go out and come back on)!
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The 500GB drive is NOT corrupted. In fact, I used to use it for Time Machine. My TM data is still on that drive and I dare not erase it. The drive is not powered by an AC adapter, either.
I don't want to go out and get another hard drive because I'm looking to sell my PB.
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Solved the problem.
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External 1TB harddrive failed to mount

Hi all,
after some happy time using my external 1TB WD drive it seems hard times comes. It failed mount, no matter what I try. I really don't know, what else I should do. I don't want to use any recover software, if possible. Please advise any help, what to do. HDD is connected on firewire, when I connect it to USB, no change - I can not see it in system.
Here is some important information:
FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
My Book:
Manufacturer: WD
Model: 0x1102
GUID: 0x90A9CBB642AC59
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
My Book Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x1028
Product Revision Level: 1028
Sub-units:
My Book SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
1TB - Time Machine:
Capacity: 999.86 GB (999,860,912,128 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Case-Sensitive Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
My Book Device Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x1028
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
My Book Device SBP-LUN:
sh-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 249.7 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *1.0 TB disk1
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS 1TB - Time Machine 999.9 GB disk1s2
sh-3.2# diskutil info /dev/disk1
Device Identifier: disk1
Device Node: /dev/disk1
Part Of Whole: disk1
Device / Media Name: WD
Volume Name:
Escaped with Unicode:
Mounted: No
File System: None
Partition Type: GUIDpartitionscheme
Bootable: Not bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: FireWire
SMART Status: Not Supported
Total Size: 1.0 TB (1000204886016 Bytes) (exactly 1953525168 512-Byte-Blocks)
Volume Free Space: Not Applicable
Read-Only Media: No
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no filesystem)
Ejectable: Yes
Whole: Yes
Internal: No
OS 9 Drivers: No
Low Level Format: Not Supported
sh-3.2# diskutil repairVolume disk1s2
Started filesystem repair on disk1s2 1TB - Time Machine
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Detected a case-sensitive volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking multi-linked directories
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume 1TB - Time Machine appears to be OK
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Finished filesystem repair on disk1s2 1TB - Time Machine
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One or more volume(s) failed to mount
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.31f0
Serial Number (system): W88*****
Hardware UUID: 9A66AD46-BE1B-520A-BB07-B060DCAF21FD
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
< Edited by Host >

ok, so I pick up last chance, I run Disk Warrior, after one hour it recovers my filesystem (really nice tool by the way).
Problem occurs, when I reboot computer - volume can not be mounted. So I ran repair disk id disk utility and it seems helps now. Now it seems I dont have problem with this disk, but I am still sure.
Anyway:
sh-3.2# diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk3s2
Started filesystem verification on disk3s2 1TB - Time Machine
Checking non-journaled HFS Plus Volume
Detected a case-sensitive volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking multi-linked directories
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume 1TB - Time Machine appears to be OK
Finished filesystem verification on disk3s2 1TB - Time Machine

External hard drive not responding

I have a LaCie firewire drive that I use for a Time Machine back up. It no longer appears on the desk top. If I reboot the computer I get the message, "the disk you inserted is not readable on this computer." It asks if I want to eject, ignore or initialize. If I select initialize, Disk Utility opens and I can see the external drive in the menu, but cannot execute any task, not repair permissions, not erase, nothing. It's all greyed out.
The disk does not show up in the system profiler. I have Diskwarrior and Tech Tool Pro, but neither can see the drive to do anything. They only see my internal hard disk.
I have another backup so I'm not worried about losing any data, but is there no way to reformat/initialize this drive?
Please help?

http://joemaller.com/1424/worst-component-ever/
http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10030

Is it possible to reinstall the OSX but not erasing the existing documents?

Is it possible to reinstall the system from my system install disk but keeping(not erasing) the existing documents,programs and other files which are created and saved so far in my MacHD?
My Mac is MacBookPro OSX 10.6
Thank you all in advance!

Yes, I did too the first time. These improvements creep up on us.
Stephanie, I just responded to another posting of yours with a Time Machine question. Multiple postings divert resources and you may end up with contradictory information.
An install from the (grey) 10.6 disk will not erase your data. However, if you are using a TM backup that will write over everything and current data will be lost.
As I understand your two posts, I suggest install the operating system from the 10.6 disk.
Copy what data you can to your external hard disk.
Restore from the TM backup.
A restore from the Time Machine backup as I say will delete everything you have and replace it with the backup you select (depends on date). You can then transfer any files you copied to the hard disk if these are needed.

Time Machine does not erase old backups

Hi,
I have a problem using Time Machine on my MacBook Air. I use a LaCie 500GB Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive for backup. The external drive has 3 partitions, one of which is dedicated to time machine and measures 128 Gb. It happens very often that I receive an error message saying that Time Machine cannot complete backup as there is not enough space and that I should manually remove old backups. Time Machine is supposed to do that automatically. The backup partition is of the same size as the internal flash drive which is not even full so I don't see why there should be a problem.
I also have a MacMini with an external Iomega drive and same setup (3 partitions on the external drive and the Time Machine dedicated one of the same size as the internal drive) and I never had an issue with the Time Machine not erasing old backups to make room for the new ones.
How can I fix the problem on the MacBook Air?
Many thanks in advance,
Igor

How much space is currently in use on the volume TM is backing up from? If it needs to do a large backup for some reason, there may not be space to do so without deleting so much that you are left with less than a full backup. TM needs the backup drive to be a minimum of 2-3 times larger than what is being backed up.

Unused node is not erased (node = 18445)

What does this mean when I tried using my external HD to back up, so did a DU repair, erased and repaired.

Hi Jan,
So, was Disk Utility finally able to fix it???
Though I disagree with the author here about DiskWarrior, there's a fair explanation of it here...
http://gopuru.com/unused-node-is-not-erased-node-953
And, it very well may be a RAM problem worth looking into...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2815793?start=0&tstart=0

External 1TB HD Not Erasing

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