Formatting an external drive after use on NSLU2

I have a Western Digital 1TB My Book that I am trying to reclaim for use on another windows system.
When I plug it into a Windows 7 system it fails to find the HID driver - but I think this could get fixed by downloading the right driver. Seems to work without the HID driver anyway, so I carry on.
The drive is not visible in Windows Explorer, so I open Manage and go to Storage -> Disk Management. A window appears informing me that "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.". I select the disk and use the MBR partition style, then click OK. A new pop up appears with the title "Virtual Disk Manager" and the message "The system cannot find the file specified.".
Right, I'll fix this. Time to break out the big guns. I start DISKPART, the command line process. "LIST DISK" shows me which disk number I need. "SELECT DISK 1" makes it active. "CLEAN" clears it. "CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY" will activate i... Oh. "DiskPart has encountered an error: The system cannot find the file specified. See the System Event Log for more information.". Not good.
Any ideas? The drive has been used as the backup drive - drive 2 of a two-external-drive set - and has been reported fine as of last backup. I've done a lot of searching for this and found nothing so far, any idea why the NSLU2 has made the drive unformattable?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

When you first plug in a WD mybook straight out of the box, it has an autorun.inf that runs the installer for the HID driver. I think you can download the software from the Western Digital website.
The HID driver is not strictly necessary, by the way: it's only used for the button on the back side and the light on the front side. The drive itself is controlled by the USB Mass Storage Device that's included with Windows.
From your post, it sounds like you are doing the right thing: use disk management or diskpart to re-initialize the partition table (CLEAN does that). But then CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY fails? That's strange and it shouldn't happen. Perhaps you have a virus scanner running that is trying to protect your disk from writing the MBR.
Try switching off any virus scanners you have; if you can't, you can try burning a System Rescue CD and booting it to do the partitioning and formatting. See the link in my signature.
===Jac
Frequent NAS200 Answers:
1. DISABLE the "convert failed logins to guest logins" option to fix permission problems.
2. NEVER insert or remove hard disks while the power is on. NAS200 doesn't support hot swapping.
3. ALWAYS use the power button to turn the NAS200 off, don't just unplug it.
4. Don't trust RAID. Make BACKUPS!
5. To ACCESS the disks directly, you will need ext2 and/or XFS file systems. I recommend using SystemRescueCD.
6. Disks will get HOT with standard fan, use "green" disks or consider replacing the fan.
7. FTP server is insecure and doesn't work behind a NAT router. Use my firmware and SCP instead.
8. MY FIRMWARE supports SSH shell prompt and SCP for secure file access, and allows running other software.

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Formatting an external drive to use with my new Mac

Hi
As per my other posts, I'm expecting a new Mac i7 with OS X Mountain Lion, due in mid Feb.
I am currently a PC user (have been for years, apologies ) and want to take all my photos (tens of thousands) from the PC and load them to the mac, or store them in a useable way...
I have a Western Digital 1tb NTFS drive, and i understand that I need to reformat this into a FAT32 format.
Does this give me issues with a 4gb or 32gb limit? Not sure if it's relevant but I don't have massive files... movies at 700mb perhaps...
Anyone done anything similar that might be able to offer advice?
Thank
Liam

Let me clarify further (but thanks for the input so far...)
I am migrating from a life of PC use, to an all singing all dancing Mac. Once migrated, the PC will go to a nephew starting uni shortly, never to darken my doorstop again.
The ideal solution would be to produce a drive that can copy all my stuff onto, that can be read and copied from to the mac, and then ideally be formatted again, to use solely with the mac..
Does that alter anything?
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How to format an external drive for mac AND pc use

i want to format my external drive so i can use it on my mac and on pc's as well. i've gathered that the MS-DOS format is the way to go. my question is this: would this create any problems for my mac then?
can i partion one part for ms-dos and part for macos extended?
cheers
-j-

MS-DOS format (or FAT32) will be fine for both Mac and PC. However there is a 4GB file size limit with FAT32.
You could use a dual partition, however the HFS+ partition would not be readable by the PC unless you installed the third party MacDrive.
Look at this page for more information on a dual partition drive for Mac and Windows.
http://macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812
iFelix

Do i need to re format my external drive if i am planning on using super duper for my bootable backups or does super duper do that for me?

do i need to reformat my external drive if i am planning on using superduper for my bootable backups or does superduper do that for me? thanks

You need to format a external drive using Apple's Disk Utility
Partition 1
Option: GUID
Format: OS X Extended Journaled.
Before OS X can be installed or cloned onto the drive, or else it can't be booted from.
Formatting a drive erases all data on it, so backup up any data you want to retain off the drive.
I really do not advise SuperDuper for the fact that it doesn't copy the RecoveryHD partition and restore it, as this is needed to reinstall a fresh copy of OS X from Apple's servers.
Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's
A better, more powerful and more intelligent tool is Carbon Copy Cloner.
See the cloning section of my User Tip here
Most commonly used backup methods

I want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read and write ,what should i do?

i want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read

Start by partitioning the drive as required for the Mac:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. 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 Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
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 Security 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 can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Now click on the Erase tab in the main menu, then select ExFAT from the Format Type dropdown menu. Click on the Erase button. This format is read/write on both the Mac and the PC. If you have a problem with it on the PC, then format the drive the same way using the Windows formatter.

Time Machine can't find external drive after installing Lion

Time Machine can't find external drive after installing Lion. I have a Laice 1 terabyte external drive that worked fine with Snow Leopard and now no show ... tried connecting it to front port and Mac Pro can't see it. Also lost Office,Quicken, and Final Cut Pro says: " You can't open application because Power PC apps are no longer supported" this is Not a good surprise!

Does the drive work when just directly connected? If so, have you prepped the drive?
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X 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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
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. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. 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 can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

30GB of space disappears on External Drive after failed DMG copy via USB

I have a 298.1 GB external Western Digital hard drive connected to my iMac by a USB 2.0 cable. It is formatted in NTFS-3G so I can use it with both my PC and Mac. Yesterday in Disk Utility I created a 50GB 256-bit encrypted DMG and told Disk Utility to save it on a folder in my external drive. It got to about 20GB and then my house's power went out. A few hours later when the power came back on, I turned on my computer, and the available space on my external hard drive went down from about 100GB to 68.21GB.
The first thing I thought was that the DMG transfer ended prematurely so I should just find and delete the incomplete DMG from the hard drive. So I went to the folder I saved it in and it was not there. I checked all the folders and I couldn't find any DMG in there. Then I went to the root of the external drive and used Get Info to find the space each folder took up. It adds up to 194.12 GB. So I subtracted 194.12 from 298.1 and got 103.98. If I'm supposed to have 103.98 GB, why do I only have 68.21 GB available? I double and triple checked the size of everything on the disk and I still should have about 30GB more than I do. The 30GB just disappeared.
I tried verifying the disk in Disk Utility and got:
2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400: Verifying volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting verification tool: 2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-v" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Entering function Verify.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** No NTFS file system checks have been implemented yet.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** Reporting that the volume is fine without checking anything.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Reporting that the volume is fine, even though that may not be the case (no fs checks performed).
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Returning from function Verify.
Verifying tool completed: 2009-06-14 11:12:42 -0400
So it appears that it's only telling me that it's fine without even checking. I then tried repair disk and got the error message:
2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400: Verify and Repair volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting repair tool: 2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-y" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Entering function Repair...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Marking volume to be checked at next Windows boot.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] "/usr/local/bin/ntfsfix" "" currently disabled.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Returning from function Repair with FSUR_INVAL.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Disk Utility stopped repairing “SHADUSMEDIA” because the following error was encountered:
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
I tried restarting my iMac and disconnected and reconnecting the cable and that didn't work. I plugged it into my PC and it still says that all the files on my external drive add up to 194.12 GB. Which still means I should have 103.98 GB of free space instead of 68.21 GB.
So I'm stumped now and not quite sure what to do. Here is the information about the external drive from Disk Utility:
Name : SHADUSMEDIA
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/SHADUSMEDIA
File System : Windows NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 298.1 GB (320,070,288,384 Bytes)
Free Space : 68.3 GB (73,348,239,360 Bytes)
Used : 229.8 GB (246,722,048,512 Bytes)
Number of Files : 145,472
Number of Folders : 0
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
You can see on there it says I've used 229.8 GB, when I've actually only used 194.12 GB. Here are the specs from System Profiler for my iMac:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: QP6450GKVUX
I'm running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6. If you need any more information just ask, I'd really like to get my 30GB back. Thanks in advance.

Can anyone help?

Is Time Machine something that I can back up to in a separate particle of my new MacBook Pro or do I need an external drive to use with it?

.....ie we have Seagate external drives but both have Windows files on them, although plenty of room. Am I able to keep the Windows files on them and back up to them with Time Machine on new MacBook Pro? Don't understand....and not very clear. Thanks
Belinda

Belinda,
In order to use Time Machine the external volume must be formatted in Disk Utility as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". You can't use a drive that is formatted to be used for both a Mac and a Windows unit (exFAT, etc.). You should purchase a new external drive to use with Time Machine and never let your work go for over a week with hooking up to the TM drive and allow Time Machine to do it's thing.
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Cannot mount any firewire/USB external drive after software update 10.5.4

After the last software update on 10.5.4 it did not complete the installation, and get stuck at the last step of running installation script for hours. So I have to restart the computer, and it restarted fine. Then I use Disk Utility to check my hard disk, and discovered some file system inconsistency error, so I repaired it (in target disk mode by another Mac). After it is repaired, the file system passed with no error.
But ever since then, I cannot mount any external firewire drive or USB drive. I cannot use Time Machine to backup my disk. I think my firewire and USB ports are fine because I can restart my iMac in target mode and connect to my MacBook via firewire, so the hardwire ports are functional, except that it seems 10.5.4 cannot detect or mount any external drive after the failed software update.
Does anyone encounter similar problem? How can I fix it? I have my disk backed up by TimeMachine but I cannot restore it if it won't let me mount my TimeMachine disk. Is there any other way other than completely reinstall 10.5 from scratch?

first, you should try reinstalling 10.5.4. download the [combo update|http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx1054com boupdate.html] and run it. If that doesn't fix the issue, you can use full system restore from TM to go back to a time before the troubles started. to do that boot from the leopard install dvd, once past the language screen go to the Utilities menu at the top and choose "restore from backup".

Format an external drive from mac to pc

How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?

kwnola wrote:
How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?
1: Remove the data off the drive
You can do this by installing MacDrive on the Windows PC to access the Mac HTFS+ format
Or you can use a Mac to remove the data.
2: Format the drive on the PC (preferably) by right clicking on the drive and choosing format
A: If data on the drive will have larger than 4GB sized files, then the format you want is exFAT
(if your using Windows XP, you can download exFAT from Microsoft)
B: If the data on the drive will always have less than 4GB sized files, then you should choose FAT32 for most compatibility with all other machines.
3: If you can only format the drive on the Mac then open Apple's Disk Utility in the Utilities folder
Select the drive on the far left, it should have the makers name and a size, then click Partition.
Now select the box and click Options: MBR Then select Format: exFAT or MSDOS (FAT32) and click Apply.
4: If any chance you need to secure delete any data remaining on the drive form being recovered, use the Erase with Zero (or 7x for very secure) before formatting.
Note: Formatting a drive on the PC there will be a option for NTFS, this is for access by Windows only, but software can be installed on the Mac to read/write this format.
If you use exFAT or FAT32, the Mac can read and write this format just like Windows can, no need for extra software.
Linux can read/write just about any format.

Is it safe to format ANY external drive to Mac OS Extended?

Some Seagate tech told me a while back that Seagate drives should ONLY be formatted with their proprietary formatting and that my data is vulnerable if I use something else. (I may have misunderstood this, but I'm 98% certain that's what he said.) I do remember him saying not to use the Mac's Disk Utility to format the drive.
I want to reformat this drive so that it's 100% compatible with my new Mavericks iMac.
Is there any concern about formatting ANY external drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Or are there some hard drives that should not be formatted to Mac using Disk Utility?
I'm under the impression that all external drives are basically the same and I can format them however I want. No drive is "made" to be formatted with a certain OS or a certain format.
Is that correct?

Formatting a drive simply will remove any data currently stored on it. There is no such thing as "proprietary formatting." Drives come out of the factory with no formatting.
Whatever the person told you it was patently wrong not to mention mis-informed.
To use a hard drive properly with any computer it needs to be formatted with the tool that is required for the operating system with which it will be used. For the Mac you use Disk Utility (the tool) and you format the drive using Mac OS Extended, Journaled (the format.)
Your impression is correct.

Formatting an external drive for both 10.4 & windows?

I just installed windows xp on my macbook pro.
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'FAT32'
But it has file size limitations.
Better to partition the external drive with Mac Extended on one, and Windows on the other.

Acomdata external drive MAC using SecureHD LogIn.

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The only way now is to launch the PC side of MAC, sign in then suspend the PC side, then the drive appears on the MAC desktop and can be used. This is a pain!

Hi pealo86
If your going to be using the External HD strictly for backing up the iMac, ie Time Machine or Cloning with SuperDuper or CarbonCloner, then you will want to reset the Partition Map Scheme to *GUID Partition Table* and the Format to *Mac OS Extended* (Journaled).
adding these DU instructions > http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
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See Sharing Drives > http://www.macworld.com/article/51972/2006/07/ww_drives.html
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How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
select the external drive in the left pane
partition and format in the right pane

Is it possible to have your music and videos saved on different external drives and use the same iTunes library?

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My library is stored on the external drive all of my music etc is stored.

Yes.

Formatting an external drive after use on NSLU2

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