Formatting external WD hard drives for Mavericks

Hello all.
I have just purchased a WD external hard drive and need to format it for my newly updated MacPro Mavericks OS.
I have visited their website but the don't have the correct installation area to select to format it. Their latest version is for the OSX 10.8.
I tried following those instructions just to try out. In Disk Utility I select the correct information and then press 'apply'.
A wonder pops up and says Partition Failed. Couldn't unmount disk.
Any help and advice please?

Hello Baltwo.
Please accept my apologies, but I have managed to reformat the HD!!
Stupid me had unknowingly left open a file that came with the HD, thus preventing any formatting from happening.
I apologise for wasting your time.
Hopefully all will be well.
Many thanks,

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Drive Preparation
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Message Edited by November12 on 07-23-2008 09:31 AM

November12, welcome to the forum,
It's not clear exactly what you are looking for, could you maybe explain a little more clearly in a new thread
Also, please note;
November12 wrote:
.....snip..
but before the sale no one unlocked the bios
..snip
If you are looking for help on unlocking the BIOS, this cannot be discussed here as per forum rules
No posts shall include instructions or directions intended to subvert security measures, including passwords, locking mechanisms, fingerprint scans, etc, nor shall any posts provide descriptions to the location of, nor direct links to content related to these topics.
As said, please by all means start a new thread for you other question(s). - Thread Locked
Andy ______________________________________
Please remember to come back and mark the post that you feel solved your question as the solution, it earns the member + points
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Formatting External Hard Drive for Backup

Please advise: how should I set up an external hard drive (WD 500GB MyBook Home Edition) with a view to using it to backup my MacBook with Time Machine and have partitions to be accessed by Windows: 1) through BootCamp, running Windows Vista (Business) on the MacBook and 2) an external PC running Windows XP? I intend to set up partitions for: 1) Time Machine (GUID); 2) a 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows Vista (on the MacBook); 3) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition for Windows XP (to back up the old desktop); 4) another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition to back up photos and video clips; 5) yet another 30GB MS-DOS (FAT-32) partition (The last one, at last!) to back up music and leave some spare room. That should leave me about 350GB for incremental Time Machine backups. (The hard drive on this MacBook is 150GB, 88GB of which is currently dedicated to OSX, with the other 60GB used by Windows.)
I don't use virtual machines or any other software to access operating systems - just reboot through BootCamp. Eventually, I intend to phase out Windows as all my old stuff - more than twenty years' worth of it - gets made redundant by the MacBook. I've had the MacBook for nearly a year now, so feel confident that it will replace the PC's. As you may imagine, however, making twenty-odd years' worth of stuff redundant is not an overnight process. I don't think I have any files of more than 4GB, nor do I expect to acquire any on the PC's, so can't foresee problems with FAT-32's limitations. I understand external PC's can have trouble seeing FAT-32 partitons on hard drives sharing partitions formatted in GUID.
What's the best way to go about doing this? Comments/suggestions/tips, please. Is the plan outlined above a stupid idea? Be honest, please!

Your computer has USB 1.1 ports; using an external USB hard drive for any purpose other than as a bootable Mac OS X backup will work, but you should choose a FireWire drive if possible, as transmission speeds are much faster. A drive does not need to be bootable if you're only going to back up documents, such as your photos, to it; it only needs to be bootable if you intend to use it to help troubleshoot future issues with the internal drive.
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(21126)

Tricky stuff: formating hard drive for Mac and Windows

Don't know how to format an external USB hard drive for these purposes:
#1. Store a bootable backup for my MacBook (Intel)
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Hi,
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