HELP - Erasing a USB Disk

I have a USB 64GB Flash Drive I bought off eBay.
When I run terminal with diskutil info disk2
   Device Identifier:        disk2
   Device Node:              /dev/disk2
   Part of Whole:            disk2
   Device / Media Name:      Generic Flash Disk Media
   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:              None
   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Total Size:               67.1 GB (67108864000 Bytes) (exactly 131072000 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
   Read-Only Media:          Yes
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes
   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported
I just want to reformat it so that it is usable again and I do not care about the data that is on it.
It was formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I have acess to Mac OSX 10.8.4
Linux and Windows 7
Thanks in Advance

if youve already formatted it and its still a no go then youve got a dead mem stick.
return for exchange.

Similar Messages

Disk Utility hangs attempting to erase SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk

I'm attempting to erase and format a SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk. Disk Utility hangs. The system error log says:
"AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
Jul 21 17:30:35 Kari-Hohnbaums-Computer-2 kernel[0]: USBF:"
The console log (and Disk Utility log) shows:
Preparing to erase : “PBEX1”
Creating Partition Map
error writing partition map: Device not configured (6)
Disk Erase failed with the error:
What is the problem? This disk is recognized by Tiger but only as read-only as it ships as an NTFS volume and must be erased and reformatted before it can be used by a MAC.
All help appreciated.

I tried the partition approach and it unfortunately failed as well. The same "hung" symptoms as before. The green light (disk activity) on the disk flashed several times at the initial request, but that was all. I eventually interrupted it after a hourn which generated the same system log message: AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
The disk utility log says:
Preparing to partition disk: “SAMSUNG HM100JC Media”
Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Scheme
Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers installed
1 partitions will be created
Partition 1
Name : “PBEX1”
Size : 93.2 GB
Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Creating Partition Map
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Partition complete.
I don't have easy access to a Window's box. I do have access to a Linux system. Perhaps I can configure it there and it will work on my PB.

My Airport disconnects randomly when USB disk is attached..HELP NEEDED !!!!

My Airport Extreme disconnects randomly when USB disk is attached, I have searched this forum but found now obvious solution.
The Airport Extreme has the latest firmware.
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Sieber

Len61 got my reply, I have copied below.
Hi - I have been on the phone with support 4X since late December - all good calls. They have been scratching their heads on this issue.
I have 2 printers and 2 drives on the airport -recent experieinces = printers have always behaved, drives have appeared / vanished / "drive needs repair" and it's just fine...
Cutting out the interim fixes, here are the simple but important solutions and everything has been stable for days now.
* rolled back to AEBS firmware 7.1.1
* replaced the passive USB hub with a powered hub ** This is when joy arrived
* make sure your drive has a block size of 512
You can run guest mode however you want, since adding the new hub, it hasn't mattered.
I haven't been brave enough to upgrade firmware to 7.2.1
cheers

How to make disk utility erase usb disk fast

I put in my cheap 3.7GB Universal Serial Bus (USB) into my eMac and i open up disk utility. But when i get to the erase tab and name my drive, i click erase, i press okay to confirm that i want to erase it and then it is on the partitioning part of the erase and it is stuck in the same place and will stay there all day and not make any progress. Is there anyway to skip this so that i can skip this or an app that will erase my usb because i need it for school.
Thanks You Guys.
Andrew.

Should you face a situation where you need to erase a USB quickly, instead
of using Disk Utility, just drag all the content you do not want to the Trash,
and Empty it before you eject the USB flash drive or other device.
By dragging only the content to Trash, and Empty, you do not need to reformat.
This saves some time/trouble. Sometimes you may have to reformat one of
these, from my experiences with cheaper ones, by then they may have failed
already and don't know it yet.
Even though the older eMac has USB1.1, later has 2.0, even a Drag to Trash/
Empty may take a little time; but no where near the time it may take to attempt
to erase using Disk Utility.
A USB flash drive nor a SSD should ever be secure erased and some makers
say not to do it (where zeros overwrite content) as that isn't good.
If you are the only user of a flash USB drive or thumbdrive, then the fast way is
the best. In the case of a cheap and non-durable one, you could physically
destroy it when done; if it doesn't do that all by itself.
Hopefully the adventure has been worthwhile...

USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

Newbie with the very latest "Don't Panic" running on a laptop. I'm coming off a year with various bloateddistros, looking for something fast and stable.
I've got my internal drive up, networking, x, gnome and openoffice all working great. Next step is to plug in my external 160gig drive with all my data on it. This is a very standard USB2-to-EIDE drive, I've had no problems with it in any distro. It's split between a 32gig FAT32 partition and a 119gig Ext3.
I followed the wiki on autofs. Nothing. Then played with HAL and the like. Made my user a member of group "storage". Still nothing.
I've seen mount problems before of course, so I tried adding gparted via pacman and running that from a root command line just to see what's physically out there. Not good: gparted never finishes getting past the "Scanning all devices....." process with the blue bar bouncing back and forth. When gparted first starts I can hear the external disk spin up and chug for a few seconds, but then nothing.
I tried a 1gig USB flash critter (probably Fat32), nothing there either. I think something is fundamentally hosed in my USB disk support. I do have a USB external trackball working though...so my ports are up.
My daemons at present:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond ntpd hal cups gdm alunnd)
Heeeelp! Neeeed my daaaata!
Wait, something else weird: if I turn on the external disk I see some CPU activity on my gnome panel monitor. Nothing major, a few light spikes. I've got a Celeron 1.6 but with the new 533 memory bus and 2gigs RAM. Once I run gparted it goes bananas and then once I close gparted CPU activity is pegged hard at 100% - yet there's no listed process eating that. Then when I turn off the external drive, CPU activity falls back to normal.
WTF, over?
Jim

Well before reading Veek's post I got further along. Almost there I think.
I went and loaded XFCE4 plus extras, and logged in with a XFCE session. I like having a backup desktop environment anyways in case Gnome gets squirrelly.
In XFCE Thunar shows the disks, but when I try and access 'em I get:
Failed to mount "128G Volume".
(exo-mount:4613): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
You are not privileged to mount the volume "128G Volume".
What I can't figure out is, what permissions? I'm added to groups "storage" and "disks"...any more needed?
The output from fdisk -l:
bash-3.2$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9729 78148161 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 19457 156288321 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 1 3824 30716217 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb6 3825 19457 125572041 83 Linux
bash-3.2$
I'm going to jump back to Gnome and try Veek's concepts...

Need help connecting to my usb disk via wan

Hey
Ive manage to connect to my usb disk in my own wifi network but when i try to connect to it through Safari using afp:// myip:chosenport it will not work, why doesnt it? I think ive checked all boxes in Airport ultility to make my disk avalible.
Could some friendly soul make a guide so i know if im doing anything wrong with my settings?

I see my usb-disk in the sidebar when i open Finder, if thats what u mean?
I should have the latest update with Mountain Lion so i suppose it would support it? And yes i am using an Airport Extreme router!
When i try to connect through Finder->Go to Server and-> writing my ip and connecting, the connection takes about 1 minute to say that the server is not avalible at the moment or something like that!

Disk Erase Failed. Disk cannot be dismounted on Mac Mini Server

Ok, this is a bit crazy for me anyway. I have a Mac Mini Server running Snow. My Server HD failed but fortunately my Mac HD was being used as an image backup and I can boot from it fine and runs perfect. The bad disk was not showing in Disk Utility at all. So I bought a new one and replaced it.
Now Disk Utility sees it but if I try to format it or partition it, I get the message the it cannot be dismounted. I tried re-setting NVRam (Optio+CMD+P+R) but n luck.
I have my original Snow DVD but I have no external DVD. I have a MacBook Pro Mountain Lion.
How do I erase my new disk so I can copy everything back?
Any help is appreciate it.

Although thats an excellent suggestion but in the end I attached an old usb backup drive and restarted and held down the Option key to select it to boot. Then it went into Disk Utility, and I reimaged the 2nd drive to the new drive. After the reimage I restarted and held down the Option key to allow me to select the first drive.
The only issue I had was to rename my boot drive back to Server HD, which I did by using Finder and one more restart.
I guess the rule is you cannot unmount the boot original boot drive unless you boot from an external drive.
All is good now and thank you.

How to control DE USB disk Automounts.

Hi,
Can someone please guide me as to how to 'control' Automounts by DE when we plug USB disk drives.
I have KDE4 on my Arch system. When I connect a pen drive/USB HDD which is formatted as vfat/NTFS, the system(or KDE) 'Automounts' it in /media and I have read/write access to it. But if I use the same drive and format it as ext4, it wont be mounted as read/write for normal users but only for root.
Now pen drives and USB HDD's are removable storage drives and hence are volatile and could not have a fixed mount point, so it cannot be mounted by putting an entry in fstab or could they?. And I need my USB HDD frequently, and manually mounting it through CLI everytime and working on it as root is a bad idea i guess.
I am posting this because m confused as to how to control this Automount feature-What is the backend to it? Because I've read that HAL no longer takes care of it and that HAL will be deprecated soon, instead UDEV takes care of it. If that is the case then should I be concerned about polkit? Because that is what's the output provided by Dolphin(freedesktop.org policy prevented blah blah).
Another thing is if HAL is still in use and Automounts my devices then is it independent or polkit is a part of it. Then, is using hal-easy an option or replacement to standard HAL. ??!!??
I tried HAL archwiki and used the code to give a user permission to give rw access to automounted ext filesystems, but then nothing is mounted, it sings the same old freedesktop.org prevented bla blah song. And I think this is a question for all linuxes using Gnome and KDE in general.
Any help is appreciated.

If by 'ability to mount as user' you mean to mount it manually but read/write access to normal users then yes. But primarily I need automounting as user, also be able to give access to other users for read/write et filesystem automounts.
Last edited by kapz (2009-11-17 01:12:56)

Time Machine times-out on external USB disk, but works on 2 others

Hello,
I wanted to share my experience, in case it is helpful to someone else. It appears that one of my external hard disks has a hardware fault, or that TM is overly sensitive to its state, thus preventing me using it for backup.
After upgrading from Tiger to Leopard on my Macbook Pro 2.16GHz, I had been trying over the last couple of days, without success, to backup using Time Machine to an external USB hard disk at work. It is a Maxtor disk in a BlueEye U235 case. On each attempt to make the initial backup, TM would copy between 2 and 25GB of data (of 75 total) to the disk, and then stall indefinately, without giving an error. (Ejecting the disk at this point and restarting the computer just lead to further problems with completing the backup that I won't go into here). I tried many times, each time reformatting the disk (with the GUID partition map), deleting the TM preference file, restarting and ensuring all other apps were not running. I was completely fed-up!
I subsequently tried backing up for the first time on a freshly re-partitioned (GUID map) Firewire 400 external disk (Prolific PL3507 Combo Device in a BlueEye O2 case) at home, and this worked perfectly the first time, taking a couple of hours. (All applications were closed at the time). Subsequent backups to this drive work fine.
I tried again with the disk at work and it continued to fail. Finally I decided to follow what was being thrown up to the system.log. I discovered that shortly after TM was stalling (somewhere between 10 and 40 mins after commencing the backup), repeated messages would appear in system.log saying "kernel IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0x4cbe100, 2 -> 1) timed out after 100683 ms" (with the "2 - > 1" and number of ms different each time), with a few minutes between each one. This suggested to me that there was some sort of intermittent failure of the disk, or the connection between the Macbook Pro and the disk, or something I don't understand. It is worth keeping in mind that this disk has been working perfectly for me - I've been backup up entire system to it every couple of days using SuperDuper, without any errors or problems.
So, I then tried using a different (LaCie) Firewire disk at work, and after reformatting / partitioning (GUID map), the backup to this worked perfectly the first time, with the entire ~68 GB completing in about 2 hours. (As an aside, switching between the TM backup disks at Home and Work works well - TM just catches up from where it last left off on the particular drive).
The message I wanted to convey is that, in my experience, TM may fail during a backup (stall in fact, as no explicit message was generated) to a disk that outwardly appears to be fully functional. I'm not sure if in my case there is a minor error with the disk, a fault with TM, or both. Interestingly, upon bringing the disk home today and switching it on it won't mount at all, on my computer or that of my partner. I'm not sure if the problems with TM were therefore indicative of imminent disk failure, or whether the trip home in the pannier on my bike has damaged the drive . So, if you're having this or some other difficulty, on a drive that you haven't purchased new, it may be worth considering that an unsuccessful TM backup may be due to a current, or imminent, problem with the disk.
Just my two cents worth.

Yes, I think you have a good point. The motivation for my post was just to make people aware - as there seems to be many people having problems with TM - that maybe the first drive you try, particularly if it is not new, may not work and that it is worth trying another if you can. Particularly in light of the fact that I didn't receive any explicit error messages, that is other than the one in the system.log file.
The USB disk was powered separately and was plugged directly into one of my USB ports (not via a hub). At the same time a USB mouse was plugged in. I think it is USB 2, but I'm not sure, and as it is not working now, I don't know how to check.
The rate at which data is copied to the two drives that work (via Firewire 400) seemed to be quite similar to the rate for the USB drive, until it bombed out.

Airport Extreme - problem with usb printer and usb disk

I have Airport extreme with firmware 7.1. I try connect usb disk and usb printer with usb-hub to airport. I can't get disk or printer working. Also try connect only disk or printer without usb-hub to airport getting same problem. How I get disk and printer working with wireless network (windows pc computers)?
1)
My printer is HP PSC 1210 all-in-one ( http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=90764&lc=fi&cc=fi&dlc=fi&lang =fi&cc=fi&y=0&x=0 )
- printer seems working fine after installing bonjour printer installing wizard.
- I get error (in windows) when I try print document from word. Error only says "error printing" in status value.
- In airport utility all seems ok. Airport see usb printer "Hewlett-Packard psc 1200 series"
- printer protocol is RAW and driver manufacture HP (also try with microsoft driver)
2)
USB disk is Targa Databox II 250
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- I have connected Targa usb disk to windows pc and run scandisk and defreg. No errors found in windows. Result..no help for airport

I have a similar problem to your second issue. Tried connecting a Netdisk to the USB port of the Airport Extreme and it also said there was a problem with the disk. Have performed a low level format on the disk and Airport Extreme still complained the disk had a problem.
After unplugging the disk, my route decided to stop allowing wireless connections even after rebooting. Ended up having to hard reset the Airport Extreme and reconfigure it with my old settings to work again.
FWIW, the first Airport Extreme I purchased today only worked on 802.11a and steadfastly refused to work on b/g so had to get a replacement. I suspect Apple's quality control is not quite as good as it used to be.

Erasing Securely in Disk Utility

Erasing Securely in Disk Utility
I wish I could send this directly to the Apple software engineer in charge of Disk Utility, but maybe there is someone on this Forum who is technically very savvy and would stake their reputation on their answer.
I would bet thousands have had this same question cross their mind...
I'm trying to understand the process regarding erasing a hard disk using Disk Utility.
For this example, use a 300 GB hard drive that has the following:
150 GB of readable files
100 GB of files that were sent to the trash and emptied (but not "secure empty trash"… so just their directory info was erased when trashed)
50 GB of never used free space
I'm confused by the wording in the Disk Utility's erase options.
One of the choices is Zero Out Free Space.
Does that mean it only writes zeroes over the 50GB of never used space?
Or does it write zeroes over the 50GB AND the 100GB spaces?
Another confusing choice is Zero Out Data
Does that mean it only writes zeroes over the 150GB of readable data?
Or does it write zeroes over the 150GB AND the 100GB of unreadable data ?
If the latter is true, then the sequence probably should be
erase free space (unless it ONLY writes zeroes to never used space)
then choose
zero out data (assuming it also zeroes the unreadable data too)
Thanks for any help

Perhps I did not make myself clear (or you misread a verb or two).
I did read your link,but it does not clarify the technical design of this software.
The Erase button lets you "Zero Out All Data", but data to me is a file (whether or not it is readable in the directory of not). Whereas Free Space can be either virgin territory or trashed files with the directory info stripped clean. So why do you say that Zero Out All Data would include virgin disk space when there was never data there ?
Also if Erase>Zero Out All Data "writes zeroes to every byte on the drive", and projects an erase time of 13 hours, then why does it estimate 2 days 9 hours when I choose Erase Free Space>Zero Out Deleted Files? (Which further confuses the reader with this Apple description: It writes zeroes over the UNUSED space in the disk.) (My capitalization for emphasis). Yes, parts of it are CURRENTLY not being recognized, but it IS filled with data (as opposed to the virgin space being filled with no data).
So you can see why I am confused.
And though you may be right, I alwatys ask. "Would you bet your child's or your mother's life on your answer?"
That's why I left it an Open question for the moment ... hoping to also snag an Apple Moderator.
Thank you for your help though.

No Erase option in Disk Utility for an SSD Drive!

Hi guys,
Made a time machine copy on a 500gb external hard drive of my 13" MBP with a HDD currently in it.
Then took my 500gb SSD from an old 15" MBP, removed the HDD and put it in my 13" MBP.
Opened up 13" MBP in restore mode. Chose restore from time machine back up.
Choose the time machine external drive as source. Then chose the SSD drive to restore to.
Said it was erasing the drive... Asked for a password...
I typed in my usual password. It then said the SSD drive couldn't be erased.
Took the SSD out and put the original HDD back in.
Plugged the SSD into a firewire 800 caddy to try erase it in disk utility as an external.
This drive will show up in disk utility but the erase option isn't available.
I can repair the disk but it says the disk is perfectly fine.
I can click on the partition option but everything is greyed out and I can't partition it at all.
This drive will now no longer show up on the desktop or finder.
This is driving me crazy!
Just want to erase the SSD, use time machine to restore onto it and get busy.
Please help!
Thanks,
Chris

Aha! I only looked at 'format' list, didn't notice the 'option' list.
problem solved.
thank you !

Access USB Disk from Win XP connected to Router

Hello,
My Airport express is plugged into cable modem router and so is a desktop running Win XP.
Another 2 machines Macbook and Winxp laptop can access AE router, internet and the USB disk connected to AE.
I am having trouble accessing the USB disk from desktop which does not have wifi and is hooked directly to cable modem router. I tried assigning a static IP to Airport Express and that didnt help either.
Any ideas?
hhol

Welcome to the discussions!
You posted in the AirPort Extreme forum, but your post indicates that you have an AirPort Express.
If you have an AirPort Express, this device does not support hard drives at the USB port. Only compatible printers are supported.

Cannot mount USB disk in SIngle-user mode (solaris 10)

Hi all ,
I need some help please :
I can read/write to my USB disks when i'm in muti-user mode but when to I swith to single-user mode ( init S ), I cannot mount it.
in Single-user mode , i started volume management daemon :
#/etc/init.d/volgmt start
#volcheck
but i'm still not able to mount it.
I tried to mount manually:
#mount /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 /testpoint , i have this error: < mount : not a UFS magic number ( 0x0) , dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 is not of this fstype.
My system recognizes the USB device though in single-user mode:
This is an output of #iostat -En
c2t0d0 Soft Errors: 1 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: BUFFALO Product: ClipDrive Revision: 2.00 Serial No:
Size:0.07GB <65339392 bytes>
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 1 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0

Hi ,
thanks for your advice. My problem is resolved.
The USB drive was actually a FAT filesystem.
so I did # mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0:c /testpoint and everything went fine
I can read/write to my USB disks when i'm in
muti-user mode but when to I swith to single-user
mode ( init S ), I cannot mount it.
in Single-user mode , i started volume management
daemon :
/etc/init.d/volgmt start
#volcheck
but i'm still not able to mount it.It probably requires other items to be started
first.
I tried to mount manually:
#mount /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 /testpoint , i have
this
error: < mount : not a UFS magic number ( 0x0) ,
dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 is not of this fstype.
Looks like it's assuming UFS. If this is a pcfs
filesystem, give it the type on the mount line.
# mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 /testpointYeah, this was the right command, I had to specify option < -F pcfs >.
but I read somethere on this forum i had to specify :c as the drive for FAT at the end of c2t0d0p0 , so the full command was:
# mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0:c /testpoint
>
DarrenThanks,
Sakolan.

Hi . i have Intel based iMac. i erased whole hard disk. now it flashes folder icon with question mark... i have no internet or orginal dvd.... i want to clean install any mac osx..friend got mac book pro and osx in dmg format . what are my options?

hi . i have Intel based iMac. i erased whole hard disk. now it flashes folder icon with question mark... i have no internet or orginal dvd.... i want to clean install any mac osx..friend got mac book pro and osx in dmg format . what are my options?

On your friend's computer with an internet connection, log into the Mac App Store with your ID and download Yosemite from the Purchases section of the Mac App Store. The make a bootable USB install media using
http://liondiskmaker.com/
Then boot from that on your computer and install
You need an internet connection to install via Recovery mode

HELP - Erasing a USB Disk

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