Formatting ext. hd in disk utility

i know i go to 'erase' in disk utility, i did that and it formatted my ext hd to FAT32 and i want the 'htf+' or whatever it's called and my only options are 'journaled, case sensitive, unix, mos dos' etc. i don't know which one is the h..+ formatting. does anybody know which one is which b/c i don't want to format it incorrectly.
thanks
(it's a maxtor onetouch III 300gb ext hd, don't know if that info is needed)

There should be one listed that says, "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) which is HFS+.
FAT32 is the best file format to choose if you are going to use this drive between Macs and PCs since it is the one file format that they can both read and write to. Your Mac can read but not write to an NTFS volume and a PC can't even see an HFS+ volume natively without a third party program like MacDrive - which works very well by the way.
If you are going to work with files that are 20GB in size, FAT32 is not an option as it will not see those files. In that case, your best bet is to use HFS+ and MacDrive.

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Can't format HDD with Leopard Disk Utility

I have two identical drives P/N: WD 7500AAK (Western Digital 750GB MyBook (USB)). I formatted one drive using 'Disk Utility' under Tiger with a Volume Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with no problem. I am now trying to format the other drive under Lepoard and the formatting fails 100% of the time. The drive will format to Fat16, but not to the desired Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Unfortunately I no longer have a computer with the Tiger OS. Any idea what is going wrong? The drive is useless if I can't format it.

Try partitioning the drive GUID before formatting it. This article explains how to format a drive for Time Machine. Once you have gotten rid of the Master Boot Record you should be able to reformat the drive the way you want.
One poster reported that zeroing out a Maxtor did not get rid of the Master Boot Record but I don't know if that would necessarily be true for a WD drive.

Greetings world.I have created a dmg. of my entire iomega ext HDD via disk utility using a mac book pro. It is currently sitting on the desktop. I have erased the iomega and now I can not understand how to put the dmg back.

It is safe to say that i need help..................
let me start at the beginning.
I have 1 2008 imac. always a pleasure never been a problem. Attached to it i have an iomega 500gb ext drive. also been ok.
until now!!
The HDD would not mount. Disk utility suggested that it was ok so i tested the imac HD. I got error code 4MOT/2/40000004: HDD- 1502. This doesnt worry me at the moment.
I attached iomega to my Mac book pro and again it would not mount. The disk utility did tell me that the iomega needed repair. it advised that i should wipe it and restore.
So I used the MB Pro disk utility to create a DMG. and saved it to the desk top. I then erased the iomega. did a repair and it all seemed ok. So then i try to do a restore.
After a very long time it said internal error with the dmg. using disk utility i did a convert dmg (compressed) and saved it to the iomega. middle of the night job!!
got up this morning and indeed it had sent the DMG to the iomega. But i could not open it. The iomega itself seemed dandy asking me if i wanted to use it as a time machine etc and it mounted ok and i saved a small jpeg to the iomega as well. I then thought that maybe when i did the convert as a compressed file i made a mistake. i'm guessing it should be a read and write so i started all over again.......... wiped iomega (which was quite quick) then tried the convert tool again.....it trys for a while then says there is not enough disk space...........I'm not sure which disk it is refering to.??
I have purchased a 1tb hard drive today incase the iomega is some how full up.
So really my question to the world is .........Help?

well no reply from the community. sniff- do i stink!? - probably a little bit. If i have lost all that data then I'm gonna really really pong.
Any ways i have purchased a 1tb usb HDD and have managed to duplicate the dmg file onto it. however still unable to mount the **** thing. so now i have ordered disk warrior which will be in my possession tomorrow.
fingers toes eyes crossed.

Formatting MicroSD card in Disk Utility-8GB card now showing as only 200MB!

Hi Guys
I want to give my sd card to a friend and so I tried to secure erase the data in disk utility and somehow managed to turn an 8gb card into a 200mb one while trying to format it to FAT format. This has happened to two 8gb cards from different manufacturers.
I tried to delete the partition and reformat the card to no avail. Even tried the solution here with no luck -
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11056512
I have extracted the log from disk utility when this happened (below) if that can give any clues
Thanks for the help!
2010-07-08 23:20:48 +0100: Mounting disk
2010-07-08 23:20:48 +0100: Erase complete.
2010-07-08 23:20:48 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:21:05 +0100: Preparing to zero disk : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:21:05 +0100: Passes : 0
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Secure Erase completed successfully in 24 minutes.
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Preparing to erase : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: 1 volume will be created
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Name : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Size : 8.07 GB
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT)
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Unmounting disk
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Creating partition map
2010-07-08 23:45:16 +0100: Waiting for disks to reappear
2010-07-08 23:45:16 +0100: Formatting disk1s2 as MS-DOS (FAT) with name UNTITLED
2010-07-08 23:45:17 +0100: 512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk1s2: 15313672 sectors in 1914209 FAT32 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=8 res=32 nft=2 mid=0xf0 spt=32 hds=255 hid=0 bsec=15343616 bspf=14955 rdcl=2 infs=1 bkbs=6
2010-07-08 23:45:17 +0100: Mounting disk
2010-07-08 23:45:18 +0100: Erase complete.
2010-07-08 23:45:18 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:51:47 +0100: Preparing to zero disk : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:51:47 +0100: Passes : 0
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Secure Erase skipped after 16 seconds.
24.5% complete.
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Preparing to erase : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: 1 volume will be created
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Name : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Size : 209.7 MB
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT)
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Unmounting disk
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Creating partition map
2010-07-08 23:52:05 +0100: Waiting for disks to reappear
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Formatting disk1s1 as MS-DOS (FAT) with name UNTITLED
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: newfs_msdos: /dev/rdisk1s1: Permission denied
512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk1s1: 407120 sectors in 50890 FAT16 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=8 res=1 nft=2 rde=512 mid=0xf0 spf=199 spt=32 hds=32 hid=0 bsec=407552
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Mounting disk
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Could not mount disk1s1 with name (null) after erase
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Disk Erase failed with the error:
File system formatter failed
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Erase complete.
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100: Erase complete.
2010-07-08 23:52:06 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:54:41 +0100: Verifying volume “NO NAME”
2010-07-08 23:54:41 +0100: Starting verification tool:
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: ** /dev/disk1
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: ** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: ** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: ** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: 74 files, 203800 KiB free (25475 clusters)
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100: Repair tool completed:
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:54:42 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: Verify and Repair volume “NO NAME”
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: Starting repair tool:
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: ** /dev/disk1
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: ** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: ** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: ** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: 72 files, 203824 KiB free (25478 clusters)
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: Volume repair complete.2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100: Repair tool completed:
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:54:47 +0100:
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: Preparing to erase : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: 1 volume will be created
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: Name : “UNTITLED”
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: Size : 209.7 MB
2010-07-08 23:55:00 +0100: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT)

Rednecs wrote:
I want to give my sd card to a friend and so I tried to secure erase the data in disk utility and somehow managed to turn an 8gb card into a 200mb one while trying to format it to FAT format.
2010-07-08 23:45:15 +0100: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
That's probably not the best partition scheme for a FAT volume format. In the Partition tab set "1 Partition", then click the "Options" button and select "Master Boot Record".

Format External Drive with Disk Utility, Make it Windows Compatible

I have formatted my external drive using disk utility, and it works great on my Mac. But no Windows PC can read it, and I need to use it on Windows PCs. I tried formatting as MS-DOS FAT but that didn't work either. What can I do?
Thanks so much in advance.

I've run into the problem fairly regularly were I format a drive as FAT32 on the Mac, but Windows won't read it. I just reformat it from the Windows machine as FAT32. My Mac always reads and writes to it just fine, so it has never been a problem, just a minor mystery.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

How do I make NTFS format for partition in disk utility ?

Hi, how would I format a external hard drive partition to NTFS for windows ? There's no option in disk utility. Only MS-DOS ( FAT ) , ExFat, free space, Mac OS extended- journaled, Mac OS extended, journaled case sensitive.
The other partition would be mac os extended journaled . Does it have something to do with partition scheme ? I'm running mountain lion .

anonymous4a wrote:
ok i wasn't clear,
That would have helped.
I want to make a backup of my windows partition and mac partition on my macbook pro retina on to ONE external hard drive.
Ok, so you have OS X and Windows in BootCamp on your Retina MBP.
You want to make a backup of both to one drive and this is what you should do.
Get another powered external drive slightly larger than your internal boot drive.
Use Disk Utility to format this external drive with a GUID partition table and two partitions each slightly larger than your MacintoshHD and BootCamp partitions
The first external partition formatted OS X extended journaled (MacintoshHD2) and the second one exFAT (WindowsBootcamp2) The OS X parittion is first at the top.
Download these two programs, Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone 3.
Use CCC to clone the OS X MacintoshHD to the MacintoshHD2, and use Winclone 3 (runs in OS X) to backup Windows BootCamp to WindowsBootCamp2.
The OS X clone on the external drive is bootable if you hold the option key down while booting the computer.
The Winclone 3 partition on the external drive is not bootable, it's a backup only as Windows is copy protected and will invalidate itself if it ran.
Warnings:
Don't use CCC to clone BootCamp, it's not designed for that and won't restore to run Windows.
There is no software that can do both parittions at the same time and be bootable or restore properly to a different sized drive or restore the RecoveryHD partition. Some have tried with some other softwares and have problems with lost drive space.
Both partitions have to be cloned/backed up seperatly as there is some intelligence involved and the user needs the option to adjust partition space.
Also, backup your files in Windows (and OS X) to a regular external exFAT drive that was formatted on the oldest Windows machine your going to connect to, OS X doesn't do exFAT correctly so Windows can't read it. The exFAT partition using Winclone likely won't be readable by a Windows PC.
Most commonly used backup methods
.Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
Again, you can't run Windows from a external drive, it's copy protected and takes the hardware id's into that, so it's essentially worthless to use NTFS on the external WindowsBootcamp2 partition.
All you need is a partition format that can handle over 4GB sized files, and exFAT is ideal and free to use. FAT32 can't handle 4GB+ files and is being phased out.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/review-is-microsofts-new-d ata-sharing-system-a-cross-platform-savior/

Problems formatting external drive with Disk Utility

Hi all
I'm having some odd troubles with using Disk Utility to format an external hard drive. For some reason, it is giving me all sorts of errors and problems.
Currently, it will let me format the drive in MS-FAT, but won't let me copy certain files to it (it gives an error code). I'm currently trying to re-format the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but the status bar give me the following error and continues to do its 'pondering' instead of giving me a progress bar:
!http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5019/picture2csm.png!
It is currently sitting like that, not doing anything (not even going unresponsive).
What am I doing wrong here?
Cheers.

Wait, scratch that, it suddenly started working again.
For some reason, I had to partition it, with one partition a Mac OS partition and the other an MS-DOS FAT... hey ho, no idea.

Formatted SD card with disk utility, broke the card.

I just bought a 4GB SD card for my camera. At first it couldn't recognize it at all but when I connected the camera (with the card) to my mac and formatted it using Disk Utility app as 1GB plus free space the camera could work with the card. When I decided to format it as 2GB plus free space the Disk Utility hung and I force quit it. After that neither Disk Utility nor camera can see the card. All menus in Disk Util are grayed out. I tried 'sudo diskutil' from terminal (the card is still mounted in /dev folder) but still get a message 'permission denied'. Does it mean that I completely damaged my newly bought 4GB card and waisted $30+? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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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.
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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.

Best format to burn with disk utility?

Can anyone suggest the best video format(s) to use if I want to burn a video file to DVD using disk utility, (if there's even a difference) and secondly, if I need to make a DVD (best quality possible) that auto plays when inserted, will Roxio Toast or some other program give me better results than IDVD, or should I not waste the money?
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IMAC - OSX 10.4.11

Unless Toast has improved significantly, iDVD does a better job encoding.
On the other hand, Toast does a bunch of other useful things (like allow you to use R/W disks) that it is a worth while investment.
x

PLEASE HELP: How to format ext HD with Disk Utilities (FAT32 format)

Hi,
Please help. I need to format a 360 GB Lacie Hard-drive on FAT32 format. How can I do it with the Disk Utilities Application? I tried but only see Apple extended, extended (journaled), MS-dos, and others, but no FAT32. Also, if the Hard drive has 20 GB of documents, can a format the resto of the drive and leave this info intact? If so how can I do it. Thanks so much. I appreciate your help.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.3)

You have to backup any data on the hard drive first.
Formatting erases anything on the partition which in your case is the entire hard drive. It is possible to create more than one partition on the hard drive but that process will also delete any data on the hard drive.

How 10.6.2 Disk Utility format "HFS" CD image for System-8?

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I've spent 2 days trying to learn how to create a CD-ROM that a System 8.0 Mac can read. The problem is that System 8.0 cannot read HFS+. I'm try to create a CD-ROM with the System 8.1 Update will correct. But I can't get 10.6.2 to create a HFS formatted CD-ROM. Disk Utility allows me to specify a CD/DVD Master image, but the format choices are only HFS Extended, MS-DOS, and NTFS. I held down the Option key, but additional format types do not appear.
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Disk Utility won't format/partition external HD

I was just using this HD earlier tonight because it had a VMware image on it that I use. (Drive previously formatted under Tiger's disk utility) Well, I decided I wanted to repartition it so I could have a LeopardInstallDVD partition and a partition for my VMware images. When I tried to repartition the HD in Disk Utility, it just kinda froze and I just got the spinning beach ball, so I had to Force Quit. I tried it again; same result. I tried to restart the computer, but it froze, so I had to hard boot it. Upon restart, I was greeted with a message that one of the disks was not recognized by the OS. Guess which one? Yep, not only did it no longer show up in Disk Utility, but now the other external drive I was using for my Time Machine backups was no longer showing either. I turned off that hard drive and turned it back on and luckily it mounted and all my backups seem to be intact. However, I still couldn't get the other one to show up. So, I unhooked it and attached it to a windows machine and it showed up as "uninitialized disk". I was able to initialize it and reformat it as NTFS. I then unhooked it, plugged it back into my Mac and it recognized it as a NTFS drive with one volume called "new volume." I again tried to partition it and all I get is the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit. I can't even do an "erase" on the drive; I just get the spinning beach ball. What is going on here? Did Leopard corrupt my drive somehow?
Edit: I just hooked up the drive to my windows machine AGAIN and formatted it as NTFS and I copied some files to it to make sure it works. Then I hooked it back to my Mac and it recognized the drive and one volume called "new volume" and it automatically mounted. I can see the files that I copied to the drive. The drive still works, but apparently only under Windows now. Why can't I partition the drive with disk utility?

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Cannot format iPod using Disk Utility

My iPod (5th Generation) has been displaying a -48 error for weeks, and i tried to follow the advice to format my iPod using Disk Utility. However, after leaving my iBook 1.2Ghz G4 on over night with Disk Utility erasing it, the little bar was still stuck on partitioning, never moving. What can i do?

try reset in iTunes. Then follow the steps in Jason Creasey's excellent procedure in the long thread ref Code -48. Good luck.

When i boot i get a flashing folder with a question mark. disk utility doesnt work or read my harddrives to boot with. i installed a new SSD and its not reading that either. i have a macbook pro 2011, any help?

So I came to this problem a while ago. M ycomputer basically froze so I was forced to shut down by holding the button down. When I started it up I got the flashing folder with a question mark. I started it up holding down the command and r keys which brought me to disk utility. Although my computer doesn't read that I have a hard drive to start it up. When I click on the disk utility app, I cannot verify or repair anything either. The buttons won't allow me to click on them. It also shows "Mac OSX Base System" which shows I have files and what not saved. I had been told that I need a new hard drive so I bought and manually installed a OWC SSD 240GB drive and when i booted the computer up it booted up yo the operating system fine with all my files and what not on there. After about twenty minutes, it froze again. I forced a shut down, restarted and the same thing happened. I am not able to choose my SSD to boot up, although thats probably because it doesn't have an operating system installed on it??
i have a Macbook Pro 13" 2011
any help would be great, I'm overall confused.

ryansaint11,
this isn’t Apple support; this is a user-to-user forum. We’re just fellow users of Apple products here.
If you want to boot from your SSD, then you should put the SSD where your HDD currently is, and put the HDD into the optical bay. (That setup will also get you the best performance.) At the moment, you’re still booting from your HDD. Note that you will need to format your SSD in Disk Utility [with the “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” format] so that you can install OS X onto it.
Since you have an Early 2011 model, it might or might not have originally come with grey installation DVDs. You will be able to find out whether it did or not by trying to use OS X Internet Recovery to install OS X onto your SSD. If it does not work, or if the installed OS turns out to be Snow Leopard, then it will have originally come with the DVDs, and you should purchase a replacement pair of DVDs from Apple or iFixit; those discs will have your MacBook Pro’s Apple Hardware Test and its iLife apps. If the installed OS turns out to be Lion, then it will not originally have come with the grey installation DVDs, and your Apple Hardware Test will be installed along with Lion, and your iLife apps will be downloadable from the Mac App Store.

Formatting ext. hd in disk utility

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