Formatting a Hard Drive

I'm trying to format a 160 GB hard drive. How long does that usually take? Any clues on why Disk Utilities has been grayed out for two hours now on my 4.5GB G5 and the status bar at the bottom has been showing about 5% "partitioning" for that long? When I try to quit Utilities I get a dialog box that quitting with operations underway can leave a disk nonoperational.
Thanks!

I have only formatted and partitioned one HD - my LaCie - nearly 3 years ago.
The process was very quick - possibly just a few minutes, if that.
Sounds like you or the computer are doing something wrong but I have no idea what.
Ian.

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I format my hard drive and now dont have a sync key to access to my account, please help me!

Please Help me! My computer was infected by a virus, and I format my hard drive and reinstall the OS. Now I installed Firefox 4 beta 10 but don't have access to my sync account because i don't the "Sync Key" and don't use Firefox in other devices... please please help me to access to my account I need recover my bookmarks and configuration, Thanks.

Sorry, without your Sync Key you're out of luck. It is used as the decryption key for the data that is stored on the Sync server.

Can i use windows migration assistant to transfer files from my windows formatted external hard drive to my mac?

I have a windows formatted external hard drive and a macbook pro. I was wondering if i could use the windows migration assistant to transfer files from my external hard drive to the mac

No.
Just connect the drive to your Mac. The Mac can read most Windows formats (it cannot WRITE Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) formatted drives.

Formatting a PC-formatted External Hard Drive to work in Mac OS

So I have a 300 gig external hard drive formatted for Windows XP with NTFS. I recently got a Macbook Pro and as it stands in Mac OS X the hard drive is read only. I can copy files from the hard drive to my Mac, but I can't edit files on the external HD or copy from my Mac to my external HD. This of course is a problem and so I need to reformat it to work in Mac OS. While I will not be using PCs anymore, if possible I would like for the external HD to be Mac and Windows compatible.
First things first I have to get all 300 gigs of files off the external HD in order to reformat it. This will be a pain but I have the means to do this. Once I get everything off, how and with what method should I reformat it to work in Mac? Should I use the HFS file system or MS-DOS? Also, what utility in Mac OS lets me reformat it. As I said, I probably won't be hooking up this external HD to Windows anytime soon, but if there is a way to format it in Mac to work with Windows, then fine.
So what exactly are my options here? I understand that I can format the hard drive in Mac OS with either MS-DOS or FAT32. I just don't know which is better/faster/more reliable in Mac OS, as I'm still a Mac newbie. I don't have files that are over 2 gigs as far as I remember, so I don't think that will be an issue. If it helps, it is mostly media files (videos, music). I've read up online about formatting a drive to work with Mac OS, but there's just so much info I'm getting confused. Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
So from what people are saying, I can format the drive in Mac OS as FAT32 (aka MS-DOS) and it will work fine between the two operating systems.
I've been reading more though and it seems that FAT32 drives can not be larger than 130 gigs? Or is that just for partitions.
I have a 350 gig hard drive and I don't plan on having any partitions. Can I just format the drive as FAT32 in Mac OS and the whole 350 gigs will be available? There's so much conflicting info in articles I've been reading.
thanks

How to Format Toshiba Hard-Drive for Mac with Parallels?

Hello,
I recently bought a Toshiba Hard-Drive with the following features:
500GB
It is a Canivo Basics 3.0
It is USB 3.0 and 2.0 portable hard drive
It has already been formatted NTFS for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8
The box says that it can be reformatted for Mac
I have a Macbook Pro with Retina Display that I bought this year in late March/early April.
It runs OS X Mavericks, and Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac.
I would like to reformat it so that I can use it on my laptop both with Windows and Mac OS at the same time. I do not wish to use a partition as I want to access the hard drive through Mac and Windows at the same time on my laptop and I also want to be able to access the Mac things on a Windows computer and vice versa.
I have never formatted a hard drive before, and I would like to use a completely safe software, or no software at all, if it is possible.
I am sorry but I don't have a very high knowledge of this.
Thanks,
Sandy-Wood

It would be easier, using Parallels, just to format the drive for "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". You can see it both in the Windows/Parallels and the Mac side. Leaving it formatted as NTFS is not going to allow you to access (write to) the drive unless you use third-party software. Formatting it for Mac lets you use it, as I said, on both the Parallels VM and the Mac side.
If you were using Boot Camp, I would advise leaving it formatted as NTFS and purchasing NTFS for Mac to access the drive on both OS's. You can mitigate that by formatting the drive for Mac:
Good luck,
Clinton

Can I install my time machine back up onto a properly formatted external hard drive?

I have a MacBook Pro with a 750GB harddrive, with 500+ Gb of data on it. Just before I traverse to Europe, I did a TimeMachine back up.
I now want to give my Mac to a friend, and buy a AirMac when I get home. Even if I get the one with the largest drive it will not hold the full 500+'back up.
I have an 8 year old Mac Book pro at home as well. It will be a few months before I can buy the new AirMac. So my question is ....
Can I install my current backup on a properly formatted external hard drive, and will it then run like a computer --until I get my new AirMac?
Thanks for your help (and please don't be too tough on me for what may see to de a dumb question)
Soper777

The Time Machine backup is not bootable
You will have to install Leopard first

Transfer photos from PC to Mac - how to format ext hard drive?

Hi, I'd like to transfer jpegs from my old PC to my new Mac. I had already put my files on an external hard drive but when I plugged it into the Mac, it couldn't read it. I got a prompt to re-format it, which I did not do.
From reading discussions here, it looks like I first need to format a hard drive on my Mac, then copy the files from the PC, then transfer to the Mac? But the explanation is over my head - could anyone explain how to do it in plain terms? Thanks so much!

Hi there, if you want both OS's to read the external drive, format it as FAT32. I would do this from your PC as I have had problems with a PC not being able to read a drive formatted by the MAC. There are also other alternative. Or there is a third party alternative called Macfuse using the NTFS-3G plugin.
It is a free opensource project that allows your MAC to read and write to a NTFS drive. So you could actually connect your PC's drive to the Mac and get whatever you need or add.
Hope this helps,
Glynn

Formatting NAS hard drive as Mac OS Extended HFS+

I just got a NAS enclosure for my home LAN and two SATA hard drives to fit.
Installed fine, even using the Windows-oriented browser interface installation.
The drives show up nicely in the finder, and some files copy over without difficulty. HOWEVER, some don't. I'm pretty sure that the problem is that the install utility formatted the hard drives in Windows format, because the files that they will not now accept are ones with Windows-disallowed filenames, such as those with long filenames or Windows-illegal characters.
SO:-
I suspect that my problem would be solved if I could re-format the drives in the NAS enclosure to Mac OS Extended HFS+ format. BUT, the Windows-oriented installation utility provided by the NAS manufacturer (Linksys -- don't believe them when they glibly say their NAS boxes are Mac-compatible!) doesn't offer Mac formatting.
And unfortunately, while the NAS drives show up nicely in my Mac finders (both 10.3.9 and 10.5.5), they don't appear in Disk Utility, which is where I usually go to format hard disks.
SO:
Is there a way to format a NAS disk in Mac format over my home LAN?
As a workaround, i could try temporarily installing the SATA drives internally in my G4 and format them that way, then put them back in the NAS enclosure. But it would be a bit of a kluge, and I'd have to re-transplant them every time I needed to undertake disk maintenance.
Any ideas, anyone? Thanks v. much.

Thank you for your response. I was able to successfully format the drives Extended journaled when they were out of the raid configuration. I was not able to format as Extended (not journaled) in the Raid configuration.

Not able to view exFAT format external hard drive in my macbook pro 10.8.2.

I have formatted my hard drive in exFAT format from a windows notebook. I am not sure what to do as I am not able to view my hard drive in my macbook.
Can somebody please help me out in this regard.?

Try connecting the exFAT drive back to the Windows notebook and use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your Taskbar.
Run a updated malware scan and/or remove any original data and reformat the drive again.
Your issue doesn't appear to be widespread, so I'm leaning towards something that got messed up somehow.
Mac's can read/write MBR/GUID and FAT32/exFAT drives, only can read NTFS, so it shouldn't be having a problem.

HT1338 I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine on my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. It was going fine when my 2 yo knocked the hard drive. Now TM said "failed" and the Mac refuses to recognize the external hard drive. Help please?

I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine and using my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. All was going well when my 2 yo knocked the disk leading to a "failure" by time machine (Latest Backup: Failed). Now the MacBook will not even recognize the hard drive. I have rebooted, tried all I can think of, but no acknowledgement of the drive. The drive itself makes noise and vibrates as if working, but nothing from the Mac. Please help or $100 down the drain... Thank you.

You may have already done these resets in the "tried all I can think of " portion of your post.....if not then here they are.....
PRAM
support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
SMC
support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
.....hopefully that is all that is required.....

Hi, I need to re-format my hard drive, as it has a virus, so will lose all my data including itunes. I therefore need to reinstall itunes - but if I do this will I lose all the music that I have bought? How do I reinstall music to the new itunes?

Hi, I need to re-format my hard drive, as it has a virus and is corrupted- so I will lose all my data including my itunes software. I guess I will need to reinstall itunes again - but if I do this will, I lose all the music that I have bought or imported into my library? How do I reinstall my library/playlists to the new itunes?
Thanks

Make a backup of your media and other important files.
Just to be safe, make a backup of your entire iTunes directory.
Restore computer or do whatever it is you need to do.
Restore your media and other important documents.
Install iTunes.
Try using search next time... this gets asked way too frequently.

FAT formatted external hard drive is not 'readable by this computer'

Hello support community
The problem: when I insert my 'FAT' formatted external hard drive (Samsung M3) into my mac book pro it comes up with the error message that says "the inserted disk is not readable by this computer" and I therefore cannot access the files.
The story (potential further details):
1. I had a problem with my mac where it took hours to load each time I turned it on, would only work when power was plugged in etc. so I had to reformat my mac hard drive (when I tried to veriify it said repair, that wouldn't work). So i'm starting with a recently reformatted, clean mac.
2. Before doing this I reformatted my external hard drive (whilst on windows machine) to FAT32 (so I can use on both windows and mac) so that I could back up my files.
3. I then transferred files from mac onto external hard drive and then also put them on a windows machine.
4. After reformatting mac hard drive when I then tried to transfer files back onto the mac I get the 'not readable' error.
The technical details:
Thank you very much indeed anyone who can help or can try and help
Cheers
Andy

Erase the drive and reformat using your Mac (Disk Utility)

I formatted my hard drive and have tons of bookmarks I saved, but I can't figure out how to get them from my old folder into my new folder for my bookmarks.

I formatted my hard drive and backed up all my bookmarks to an external hard drive. I now want to take my bookmarks from my external hard drive and put them into my freshly formatted computer but I can't seem to find the place on my hard drive to save my bookmarks to. I searched everywhere online and it keeps telling me to import an html, but that doesn't help when I have about 20 bookmark folders and about 100 bookmarks altogether. Please help. Thank you.

'''''"... I have about 20 bookmark folders and about 100 bookmarks altogether. " '''''
Firefox doesn't store bookmarks like that, sound like a Windows / IE favorites scheme used for '''''url''''' files and folders which isn't directly compatible with the way Firefox does things. Firefox uses a '''json''' file for bookmark backups, a '''bookmarks.html''' for import and export is bookmarks, and stores the users bookmarks in the '''places.sqlite''' file, along with browsing history.
Put those folders and bookmarks in the '''\user\Favorites\''' folder so they are in IE and export your IE Favorites in HTML format, so you can import them into Firefox.
In IE:
File > Import/Export - Export to HTML file
''then in Firefox:'' <br />
Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup - Import HTML... = From HTML file

How do I format the hard drive on my Imac without losing the applications etc?

I am fairly new to mac computers. and was wondering if there is anyone out there who could help. I have an Imac running Snow Leopard which is becoming very slow in starting up. I want to format the hard drive but still want to retain the applications etc already on the Imac. Can I just time machine the computer then insert thte OS disk which will format the hard drive? Will this give me a better start up time?
Many thanks in advance.

If you format the hard drive, you'll lose all your data. You can make a Time Machine backup, format the disk and restore from the backup only what you need

I want to format my hard drive and install Lion, using Snow Leopard at the moment.

I'm running Snow Leopard at the moment, and would like to install Lion.
But I want to wipe my hard drive clean before doing so, is there a way of formating the hard drive as you install the downloaded lion?
Thanks for ur answers.

Not that I'm aware of. You can, however, grab the installer file and create a bootable USB thumb drive after downloading Lion and BEFORE you install it. Read here on how to do this.
After downloading, I would let it install. Then reboot with the USB thumb drive, use Disk Utilities to wipe the drive and then install Lion from the thumb drive. Do a backup first.

I have formatted my Hard Drive, and i want to restore my bookmarks in firefox, please help!

i have formatted my Hard Drive due to virus slowing down the computer, and oh!, its OS is XP. i want to restore my bookmarks in firefox, please help! . Good Day!

Hi,
Did you backed up these ones on an external support or synced on a firefox sync account ?

Formatting a Hard Drive

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