External drive formatting mystery?

I have an external hard drive that has worked fine for the last two years. I had it partitioned into two volumes and was a time machine back up on one partition. I have new mac now and wanted to set it up for the new mac. I decided to try and reformat the drive first before I pointed time machine to it and now it's almost doa. Disk utility will see the drive but can not erase it. I've tried to partition it also and that fails also. I've tried connecting via usb and fw/800 and fw/400. I think the drive is physically fine but am wondering if I corrupted it somehow with time machine? I don't need any info on it so I'm fine with a complete wipe but it keeps failing to erase.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Dave

Dave Turner3 wrote:
I really don't want to due an archive and instal of the os x but it's a possibility. Any ideas?
There is no such thing any more. Snow Leopard has only one Install option, which replaces the old version with a new one, without touching anything else.
Then download and install the 10.6.5 "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.

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External drive format to be used as iTunes library and media folder

Hi everyone, I want to transffer my iTunes to an external drive, do I need to format my external drive to Extended Journal or will an Appleshare be alright? Thanks!

Thanks for the reply, good! I only asked because I read that if you transfer you iPhoto Library you need to have your external drive formatted to Extended Journal so I thought that it might be the same for iTunes. And I only read the post after I started to transfer the iTunes to an external drive. Thanks again!

Music Server Can't See External Drive Formatted for WIN with Disk Utility.

Is there any reason an external drive formatted for WIN (MS-DOS(FAT)/FAT32 or NTFS w/ NTFS-3G/MacFUSE) with Disk Utility would not work for intended purpose? I have a music server (Bryston BDP-1) that uses an attached USB drive for storage/playback of music and can only read FAT32 or NTFS formatted drives. I've tried both and neither is readable by the BDP-1, yet I have no problem reading/writing to the supplied 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32), as well as another 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32). Get Info shows; "FAT32" for all drives formatted as such.
Note: From what I'm told the BDP-1 uses a scaled down version of Linux for it's OS. Isn't that UNIX? Shouldn't it be compatible (Read/Write) with other platforms (i.e, Mac)? Bryston says the reason they use it because it's Open-Source. Does Linux only work FAT32 or NTFS?
I do have Fusion/XP, also access to WIN PC's, but I just hate to use it when I shouldn't have to. It makes no sense why the drive can't be read by the BDP-1 when formatted for WIN under OS X.
And there was one other issue, after the third try to format fro WIN the external drive suddenly began making faint clicking sounds instead of a spinning drive sound only when plugged into BDP-1 USB port. But it works fine when connected to iMac FW.
HW Specs:
Drive: G-Drive Mobile USB/FW 750GB

Exchanged drive. Works now.

External Drive Format - Mac Extended vs Fat32

Hi
There seems to be a general consensus that if you are saving iMovie projects to an external hard disk, the format must be Mac Extended (Journaled).
There is an Apple support article from July 2003 saying that this is the case.
However I have experimented, testing an imovie 6 project saved on both a Mac Extended partition and a Fat32 partition on my external drive.
Both appear to run perfectly.
Does anyone know whether the article / idea that iMovie needs Mac Extended format is out of date? Has subsequent releases of iMovie fixed the issue with using Fat32?
Any experiences/thoughts anyone? I'd ideally prefer to keep my external as all Fat32 seeing as I want to swap files with my PC.....

Why not partition the drive, one partition Mac OS Extended, one partition Fat32, as suggested in another thread?
BTW, I wouldn't rely on your experience storing an iMovie project on a Fat32 drive to prove much of anything. If Apple says not to use it, I wouldn't use it. There's no way any one of us can test all the conditions that can and will arrise.
One such condition, if memory serves, is that large clips — longer than 20 minutes — do not import correctly with Fat32. Something about a 4GB limit, if I recall. Users have reported other problems too. A search for "Fat32" in the iMovie forums should reveal several.
Karl

HELP! Urgent need of info on External Drive format for iPhoto!!!!!

OK, I am running out of space on my MacBook's internal 80GB drive (funny, when I started I thought that was huge, lol). I got an external 500GB GForce, and love it. When I got it set up I found that the FAT32 works with the Mac OS X, and I should still be able to access those files from a Windows system. Turns out I am going to need that because I am going to need to ship my MacBook to Apple for repair (unrelated issue), and the only other system I have to be able to access any of my business's mission-critical data will be a Dell with either Windows or Linux on it. I have found a few discussions here, tho, that mention that the drive needs to ve formatted in a Mac format "or else". WHY???? Is this really an issue, or no longer with the Intel Mac & OS X? I have copied files to the External drive, and seem to be able to access them OK. Oh, in case it matters, they are jpg.
Please HELP!!!!! My panic is that one of my businesses is photography, and I can't afford to loose any of these pix! Apple tech supp told me he can't find any documentation that says what the drive format must be, but then they can't figure out why my system keep shutting itself down without me having to ship it back to them, so I don't have a warm fuzzy about that, lol.
THANKS!
Andrea

breathe joy:
There's a way to have your photos on the external drive but have a library on your Mac using iPhoto 6's alias mode. That keeps the bulk of the file size off your Mac. I have 17,600 images (27G in size) on an external HD and my library is only 1.6G in size. Check out these Tutorials on how to go about setting it up. The caveat is that the PC user, as JMEH pointed out, should not work on the actual files but save any edited versions to another locations. Those files should be read only for all users.
Do you Twango?

Most suitable external drive format for pc/mac

hope i've posted this in the correct forum.
i've formated an external OWC mercury 500GB drive to use with my desktop asus P4 and my macbook pro 17"
i formated in fat 32 in order to be able to read/write data files from both systems... so far things work ok with the exceptions being the trashes and ds files that the apple OS X litters the drive with... only the pc (explorer can see them) i've not yet had time to install and try and configure blueharvest (an apple program to fix it's mess).
moreover, i find i'm unable to copy large files like movies etc. because of a file size limit engendered by fat 32
i've just purchased another 500GB external drive and would like some advice on a 'POSSIBLE' better way to format this drive so the two systems can read/write data files.
any help would be appreciated... perhaps a link to a more detailed thread on this vexing problem of getting drives to pair (GLITCH FREE)...
thanks,
O

The easiest way is to format the external drive in either HFS (Mac) or NTFS (Windows)---connect the drive to the compatible computer (Mac for HFS; PC for NTFS) and then access the drive through your home network (assuming that you are networking your computers).
The reason this is the easiest is because across a network, the file system makes no difference--the network protocol and the built-in SMB file sharing protocol automatically do the necessary translations to allow you to read and write to any computer on the network as long as sharing and permissions are correct. This all happens in the background--you won't notice it---and the result is that your Mac computer can read and write to any PC drive, and your PC can read and write to any Mac drive.
I do this all the time on an eight computer home network of mixed Macs and PCs. I format the external drives in HFS (Mac) because I like using Spotlight (although Vista search is quite good)---and then transfer files from the PCs onto the external Mac drives.

External Drive Formatting Problems - Please Help!

I formatted an external drive (just a 1gb memory stick, i intend on formatting an external hard drive i have coming in the post in the same way. This is to test that it will work) with 2 partitions.
Half in HFS+ for my storing documents from my intel imac and the other in FAT32 to use as a windows partition to store documents from my windows laptop.
(I know that FAT32 works with both but FAT32 has a 4gb transfer limit and is general untrustworthy - if possible i'd rather format the windows partition in NTFC if possible?)
I'm doing the formatting/partitioning in apples disk utility and it appears everything works fine, my mac detect both partitions as separate drives as its supposed to.
However, when i then insert the drive into my windows laptop it detects the drive and tells me that it needs to be formatted, i say yes... and it formats the whole thing as FAT32, whereas i want half FAT32 (or preferably NTFC) and half HFS+.
I tried formatting half as HFS+ and half as 'free space' (again with apple disk utility) then inserting it into the windows laptop, it asks me to format it and it formats just the HFS+ side into FAT32 and the 'free space' stays that way.
Does anyone have any solutions to this?
Any help would be MUCh appreciated.

In Disk Utility, when you partition (tab) again, click on "Options..." at the bottom, then change it to Master Boot Record so your PC is happy.
MacFuse 2.0 can read, write and create NTFS and other foreign formats.
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/17/167220
Disk Utility defaults to GPT and puts small 200MB GUID, adds an EFI partition for each user volume, and those are what probably confuses Windows, especially XP.

Airport extreme external drive Format?

I have an airport extreme and would like to set up either one or both external drives 2tb and 3tb as media drives or storage. I have a combination of Imac, Ipad, PCs and Android devices that connect and I would like to have the abilty to read/ write to these drives. Is this possible? And if it is what format should the drive/s be in?
Sorry if this has been covered somewhere else I have searched and can't seem to get a good answer.
thanks for the help!!

An USB drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), FAT16, or FAT32, and will work best if formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when there are any Macs on the network. ExFAT and NTFS won't work.
If it's an Ethernet drive and not an USB one, you don't normally need to be concerned with how the drive is formatted. Just plug it in.
(88828)

Back up failed to external drive (formatted to MAC OS Extended)

I have recently bought an external drive, have used disk utility to format it to MAC OS Extended (journaled).
I have then used Time Capsule to complete a back up, but it fails every time I try.
The error message says" The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the back up disk"
I have then tried to repair the disk and it says the drive appears to be fine.
I cannot understand why the back up wont work.
I am still on snow leopard, but need to back up before I update to Mavericks.
Plrase help.

Hi there Shainj,
You may find the troubleshooting steps in the article below helpful.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
-Griff W.

External Drive Format / Partition Question

Ok.. had my iMac for almost a week... and loving it. Starting to feel comfortable with it.
I just ordered a LaCie 750G External Drive for Time Machine and some extra storage. My question is this... I will partition the drive for 500G for Time Machine and 250G for extra storage. This looks straight forward enough in the disk utility. I know the Time Machine will show up on my desktop... will the second partition also show up as a Hard Drive on my desktop as well??
Thanks in advance for your help. Also, any suggestions on setting this up any different are welcome.

Thanks George... I appreciate the response. That is what I kind of figured it would do... but since I am new to this I just wanted to verify.
I will use the other (storage partition) and a backup for my current backup. I actually have (2) NAS units that I use for storage but have some critical files that I want to put into a third location.
Thanks again...
Ronnie

Confirm hypothesis: bad DVD's & print to tape due to external drive format

I bought anexternal drive about three months ago. Ever since that purchase my DVD's have had continuous errors. (locking up, massive pixelation, just won't be recognized). The interesting part was not all DVD players had a problem-some played fine.
We thought bad DVD's, corrupt files, bad burner--all have been checked and was in to APPLE three times. I just opened the "info" on my external-that I thought I completed a Mac format-is labeled as MS-DOS (Fat32). I've heard FAT 32 can "silly errors". Can this be my problem.
After you call me "an idiot" can you confirm my hypothesis? As was recommended yeterday here, I will be formatting this external to "Mac OS X extended" shortly

FAT formatted drives have file size limits. FAT 32 is 4 GB, I think. If your file is larger it gets broken into chunks.
An hour of DV footage is just under 13GB, so that would be broken into four chunks. The fun starts when you delete or move one of those chunks as it makes the rest useless.
While this might be playing a part in your current issues, there could be something else going wrong too. Reformat your drive as Mac OS Extended -at least you have then closed off that avenue.
Don't forget that reformatting will also erase the drive completely.

Seagate External drive formatting problems

I'm having issues with a brand new seagate drive that I've just bought. It's a 750Gb USB 2.0/Firewire drive. It came in the box formatted as MS-DOS. So, I went into disk utility and tried to format it as a Mac-OS (Extended) (Journaled) drive....but, everytime that I try that, the action script at the bottom of the window says something about "such and such drive's partitions are not in incriments of 4k"....then it proceeds to seem to do nothing.....just sit there "thinking" for hours. It never makes any progress in re-formatting the drive. I let it sit for about 6 hours yesterday and it didn't do anything.
So, today, I tried formatting it as a Unix drive....that worked fine. Then, I tried formatting it as a MS-DOS drive, and that worked fine. But I still can't format it as a Mac drive. Any suggestions? Thanks very much.
-Neil
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You need to re-partition the drive.
Basic Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. If this is the only drive in the computer then you will first need to boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. After the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.)
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. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Click on the Options button. Select GUID partition scheme for Intel Macs or APM scheme for PPC Macs. Click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Quit DU or repeat process for other new drives.
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External Drive Formatting

I have a spare harddrive id like to use across XP and OSX, however is thee a file format i can format it to, to read/write natively on each without a filesize limit? or is that the silver lining?
thanks!

MS-DOS, is a FAT32-formatted disk.
Launch Disk Utility choose the upper icon, choose the "erase" tab. choose MS-DOS as the format and Name.
-mj
[email protected]

WD USB External Drive - file format

OK, I've taken the plunge and bought a Macbook I've got a WD external drive formated in NTFS for back-ups. I've sussed this can only be read from the MAC - is there a format that can be used to both read and write by both Mac and XP?
Thanks
Mapper

*"is there a format that can be used to both read and write by both Mac and XP?"*
FAT

I have an itunes library on an external drive I want to use on a dool boot computer. How do I set this up without duplication of files

Ok, here goes with the explanation. I am running a Mac Mini mid 2010 with mt iTunes library on an external USB drive. I dual boot the computer into Windows 7. I want to be able to use the same iTunes library in both Operating Systems. I am trying to set this up on the Windows side without accidentily erasing, moving or duplicating any files. In the past when I have tried I have ended up with multiple files. I have an iCloud also but do not want to download any files again. How can I get iTunes on Windows to simply recognise my existing storage and create a library list from what is already there rather than duplicating files?
Update: As soon as I signed in with my iTunes account iCloud picked up my playlist and now lists all my music. Right clicking on the songs give me the choice to download the files, but the files already exist oin my external USB. I simply want iTunes on Windows 7 to point to the existing files.

How is the external drive formatted?
Allan

External drive formatting mystery?

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