How to format an external hard disk Mac Os Extended (Journaled)?

hello
I connect an external hard disk (2.5' IDE Western Digital Scorpio Blue, WD2500BEVE) via USB or FireWire to my Mac mini. The Disk Utility tool shows an external disk drive of 128 GB - but the disk has 250 GB. How can I format the external USB/Firewire-harddisk 250 GB "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"?
I tried also to format the disk on a Windows PC (Windows XP). But I could not find a software to format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Any hints on this? Thanks in advance for any feedback!

andreasmarx wrote:
As I use theses hard disks in a external hard disk case, I'm asking me whether my hard disk cases do not support more that 128 GB disk capacity. Is that realistic?
It is not only realistic but probably the reason your Mac cannot see more than 128 GB of the capacity of the drives mounted in them. It has nothing to do with the interface between the Mac & case (like Firewire) but instead with the controller in the case that connects the raw ATA drive to that interface. Older ATA standards used a 28 bit LBA (logical block address) scheme to access the disk. For 512 bytes per sector this works out to a maximum of 128 GB of addressable disk capacity. The ATA-6 standard, also called Ultra-ATA/100 or just ATA-100, increased the bits in the address space from 28 to 48, with a disk capacity limit of 2 petabytes.
ATA-6 was introduced in 2001, so any external drive case made before then for ATA drives will be forever limited to 128 G. Even now, some come with a controller that does not support the ATA-6 standard, & essentially none have all the hardware to support its full 48 bits of address capacity. However, since 2 PB (2000 terabyte) drives won't be available anytime soon, all you really need is a case that is ATA-6 or better compliant & supports enough address bits for the largest drive you intend ever to put in it.
Case makers don't usually make this information easily available but many now include a "bullet" spec about the maximum capacity their case supports, typically rounded off to simple numbers like 320 GB, 500 GB, or whatever. If you can't find this info, you can assume that the newer the case the more likely it is to support larger capacity drives, or just buy one with a good return policy & test it yourself with the largest raw drive you own.

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Formatting an External HD as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I am having a challenge formatting my external hard drive in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. From reading the forums I found out that I can not copy my iMovie events to the external HD unless it is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I have a Sans Digital Towerstor external HD enclosure with 2 Seagate 1.5TB hard drives in it. I have been using this setup formatted as FAT with no issues. That is until I started running out of HD space on my 24" iMac. After trying unsuccessfully yo copy my iMovie events to the external HD I found out that it was formatted incorrectly. I have since made copies of all my information and set the external hard drives to a Raid 0 configuration so I can format both drives.
I tried many times to format my external HD's in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with no success. I kept receiving the error "Partition failed with the error: File system formatter failed." I read some additional articles that suggested I try the Partition tab as opposed to the Erase tab in the Disk Utility. I was able to successfully format the drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
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I need to have the drives in the Towerstor as a mirror backup of each other as I have a lot of important information. Any adivec you can give on how to partition these drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in a Raid 1 configuration would be most appreciated.
Thank you for you time and input.

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.

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.

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http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html
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success1975 wrote:
Thanks
1) In 'ExFAT' format, is there a limitation on the file size?
Not one that will matter.
2) Is 'MAC OS Extended' format, only for MAC computers?
Yes, only for Mac
3) What are those (a) journaled (b) Encrypted & (c) Case-sensitive? or when to use those?
Again, only for Mac.

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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4073062&#4073062
"Open Disk Utility. Select the drive entry for the external drive (Mfgr.'s ID and drive size) then click on the Partition tab. Select one (1) partition from the drop down menu. Click on the Option button and select the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme then click on OK. Set the format type to MSDOS (FAT32) from the Format drop down menu. Click on the Partition button. Wait for the volume to mount on the Desktop. Select the volume entry (sub-entry of the drive entry) for the volume you just created, click on the Erase tab. Set the format type to MSDOS from the Format drop down menu, click on the Erase button. Wait for volume to mount on Desktop. You're done."
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Advice on how to format an external hard drive for a MacBook Air

I have an external USB hard drive plugged into a 64GB MacBook Air. How should I format the hard drive so that when I run out of room on the small 64 GB SSD drive on the MacBook Air, it will start putting some iTunes or other files onto the external hard drive? I only put iTunes and other small music files on the MacBook Air in order to save room. I do have iTunes set for iCloud.

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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 Partition 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.
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Installing bootcamp, pauses and reads "Back up the disk and format it to a single Mac OS extended journaled"

I just ran disk utility as promted and checked, the main disk is already formatted to a single Mac OS extended (journaled).
It previously had parallels partitioning, it is still installed and I can't uninstall it, could this be the problem?

Siat Mauk wrote:
I just ran disk utility as promted and checked, the main disk is already formatted to a single Mac OS extended (journaled).
It previously had parallels partitioning, it is still installed and I can't uninstall it, could this be the problem?
No, Parallels does not create a partition, it's just another program.

How to format an external hard disk Mac Os Extended (Journaled)?

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