I Can't Erase the Empty Space with Disk Utility

It always gets stuck. Last time i tried it, it went all the way almost to the end of the fill bar. then it got stuck.
But even when i did manage to do it using the FASTEST option which just writes ZEROS over the free space 1 time.. I used DISK DRILL to see if it could recover data and yup..it was still recoverable. Another thing i did was fill my free disk space with big huge movie files. And old stuff was still recoverable with Disk drill.
But anyway why Disk Utility Erase Free Disk Space gets stuck? And also why disk drill can still find files even after i empty free disk space or when i fill empty free disk space with new files?

Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your Tiger 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 Utilities menu.
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. 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. After completion quit DU and return to the installer. Continue with Tiger installation.

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How can I erase My hard drive. Disk utility only gives me the option of erase free space. I have 27in iMac with Lion and 12 gb ram.

How can I erase my hard drive? Disk utility only gives me the option to erase free space.
Thanks for any assistance.

Drive Preparation for Lion
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
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. 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. Quit DU to return to the main menu.
5. Select Reinstall Lion then click on the Continue button. You need an active network connection in order to download the Lion software.

How can you change the primary partition in Disk Utility?

I have made another partition using Disk Utility to install Snow Leopard. On my main partition Lion is installed but when i boot into Snow Leopard and try to delete the Lion partition it comes with an error "This operation requires a newer version of Mac OS X for this disk". I tried deleting the partition from Recovery HD but it says it couldn't unmount the disk.
Is this because Lion is the main partition, can you even delete the main partition?
And if I do delete the main partition will i be able to move the Snow Leopard partition "upwards" in Disk Utility?

ralphfromhome wrote:
1) First of all what is GUID.
It's the "partition map scheme" Apple uses so your firmware knows what is what on your boot drive, what partitions there are and what format they contain.
2) Secondly, would I just be able to make a new image in disk utility and use that instead of an external hard drive?
No, you need something to boot off of and remove all data off the internal drive that's going to be reformatted with a new parttion, that's why you use the free Carbon Copy Cloner, it does both in one shot and it "blesses" the drive to make it bootable.
3) When I use Carbon Copy cloner will it only copy Snow Leopard Installation or all of my files also?
It copies everything in your Snow Leopard partition to the external drive, files, programs the OS everything except whats in the Trash.
4) In your 8th step you mentioned repairing permissions on both. Both of what?
Both drives, the internal and the external clone in Disk Utility (ignore the long list that appears)
It's a safety check to make sure your permissions are set back to original settings, I think the newer version of CCC now does this, but I havent' checked, doesn't hurt to do it again.
5) If you still feel like typing can you tell me how long this whole process might take?
Formatting a external drive
You should Erase with Zero option first, that will take a hour per 500GB
Formatting shoud be rather fast, a few minutes.
Cloning Snow Leopard to the external drive should take about a hour per 500GB
Formatting the internal drive a zero erase first for safety should take another hour per 500GB
Reverse cloning Snow Leopard back onto the internal drive should take another hour per 500GB
Good thing about it, it's pretty much all ciick and go watch TV while it works.
I was actually planning to make a Genius Bar appointment to fix it, by the way does that cost much?
No idea, but you don't have to pay if you get a external drive for $70 or so, CCC is free.
You get to keep the external drive and use it later for cloning as hard drives die all the time, the clone would get you back to using the computer.

Can you use the "Restore" function in Disk Utility to clone MacBook Pro HDD and make a bootable copy?

I'm cloning my MacBook Pro's HDD to a SSD and didn't really want to install another app (SuperDuper, CCC), can I just use the Restore function in Disk Utility app to clone it and make a bootable copy on my SSD?
Thank you for the help!

Yes.
Clone Yosemite, Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Can I create a raid drive with disk utility

I recently bought a 2TB seat gate external drive.
I want to use this drive with time machieve as well as set it up as a raid drive to strode photos.
Is this possible to do with disk utility?

Hello
you can not make any kind on RAID type with only one hard drive you need at least tow drive to perform a RAID volume
then , hard drive utility can be use to perform software raid ( Level 0 an Level 1 only )
for more info about RAID technologie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Pierre

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
3. So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
4. No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

I erased my iPod nano with disk utility and tried to restore but I get a 1430 error and it never restores.

Ok so I tried to connect my iPod nano to my computer, but when I opened iTunes, the iPod automatically ejected. I thought that restoring it would fix that, but since I couldn't restore it in iTunes because it kept ejecting itself, I decided to erase it using disk utility. I read on here that it's possible to do that. So then my iPod said to restore in iTunes after I erased it, so I did, but it failed with an 1430 error. How do I fix it? Is my iPod destroyed for good?

Take a look at this support document regarding that error. iPod: Can't restore or update in iTunes with error 1415, 1417, 1418, 1428, 1429, 1430, 1436, or 1439 - Apple Support

Can't enable the debug menu for Disk Utility

I tried "defaults write" and "-bool" to no effect.
I also tried both these terminal commands using a bootable USB, and launching Terminal to no effect.
(My firmware password was suddenly removed as well. Weird.)
Any ideas? Thanks.

Also, when the mac was bought, the firmware password "magically" appeared. I just tried DUDebug; it worked once, then didn't after repeated trials.
More questions: if I merge the EFI partition with the main partition, and then erase the drive, what isn't erased on the EFI? In other words, what would I expect on the mounted EFI drive? Additionally, how do I sort through the EFI volume on the desktop?

Can't partition free space using Disk Utility

So something went wrong when I tried to bootcamp.
Now the situation is following:
1) I can't install Windows using USB stick, it says that the free space is in GPT;
2) I can't partition the free space with Disk Utility, tryied it also with recovery mode, the apply button is clickable and active, but it does nothing, it just stays like so and when I exit from Disk Utility it asks if I want to quit without applying but it doesn't work.
So basically I have wasted 20GB of space and can't do anything with it.
I don't want to format the hole disk, are there any other workarounds without need to reinstall OSX?
I have MacBook Pro 13" Retina (late 2013), 128GB SSD, 8GB ram.

markov-mac:~ markov$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         100.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *100.0 GB   disk1
markov-mac:~ markov$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 0F0D9268-58FC-4832-8FCB-4A11FB5675F6
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         100335546368 B (100.3 GB)
    Free Space:   15724544 B (15.7 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9B8968BE-CE97-4A66-B5B3-31B4EB87E21F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     100335546368 B (100.3 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family B29C277A-660B-41C4-8F5C-A1C5FB01B60F
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 6736784D-A946-4EBF-BBA2-BC7DDC6C4EDE
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          99999997952 B (100.0 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
markov-mac:~ markov$ mount
/dev/disk1 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
map -fstab on /Network/Servers (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

Needed? Option to Fill Empty Space with Podcasts When Synching to a Device

Hello,
With the new 32 GB capacity of the iPhone 4, I find that I have a lot of remaining space after selecting 10 latest unwatched podcasts. On the other hand, if I select all unwatched podcasts to download, I get a warning that I have exceeded the capacity of the device.
It would be nice if, in iTunes, the following options existed:
1. Fill the empty space with selected podcasts
2. Select 20 unwatched videos from the dropdown (in addition to the other existing options)
3. Enter the number of podcasts the user wants to download for all podcasts.
4. Enter the number of each type of podcast the user wants to download.
There is an option to fill unused space with music, but no similar option for podcasts.
I have submitted to http://www.apple.com/feedback, but I wonder if anyone else has this issue?

AC Adam wrote:
The only way I can think of to work around this might be to dump a lot of photos on the phone when syncing such that they take up an extra amount of space, then manually delete them from the phone interface once I get done.
That or add an App or Apps to take up the space.
I would think there is more eloquent way to do this with through either iTunes or the iPhone.
Nope.

Start up and shut down is slow after erasing free space using disk utility?

I went to Disk Utility, clicked Erase, and then "Erase Free Space." When I saw that it was going to take 1 hour and 30 minutes, I tried closing disk utility. It wouldn't let me exit, so instead I pressed "Skip." But when you hover over the "Skip" button it says, "Erase all data and reformat the disk."
I'm wondering if the fact that I pressed the skip button has anything to do with my computer shutting down/starting up A LOT slower now. If so, what can I do to fix it?
Thanks!

Just wanted to give an update. I called Apple and apparently, you shouldn't empty the free space using disk utility while you're logged in. I had to insert the Installations CD and press the "C" button while my computer restarted, and used Disk Utility from there. My start up and shut down speed still isn't exactly the way it was before, but this definitely made a difference.
Thank you to those who replied to my question!

First version MacBook Pro, 10.6.8, freezes with pixelated screen. Repaired HD with Disk Utility, but still happens. Temp gague shows max of 51C. Any ideas?

I have the first version MacBook Pro, running 10.6.8 (most current OS that works). It freezes with a pixelated screen. This may not happen for weeks, or it may happen every time i restart. I repaired the hard drive with Disk Utility, but the problem still happens. The temp gague shows a max of 51C. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

I have the first version MacBook Pro, running 10.6.8 (most current OS that works). It freezes with a pixelated screen. This may not happen for weeks, or it may happen every time i restart. I repaired the hard drive with Disk Utility, but the problem still happens. The temp gague shows a max of 51C. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

RAID with Disk Utility question

I've setup a RAID array in disk utility for an external SATA NAS that I have. The Silicon Image Si3132 drivers are not working for Snow Leopard (the SATARAID 5 drivers) so I've installed the base non-raid drivers for 10.6.
I'm using Disk Utility to setup the RAID for now until I get updated drivers from SI. Here's my question:
Let's just say that my Mac Pro one day decides to die and I have to rebuild a new OS on the machine. I will then have this external drive where I've configured a software RAID with Mac OS X. Will I be able to rebuild this RAID and recover the data, or will I lose all of the data if the Mac needs to be rebuilt?
The external enclosure has its own controller, but these silicon image drivers do not seem to want to work as they are kernel panicking.
Will I be able to recover the RAID config with disk utility if I rebuild the machine? My thinking is NO

You have four internal hard drives; ability to boot from FW or USB, and I would include TimeMachine and clone (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper). Some WHS NAS servers also support TimeMachine and SuperDuper, but I would have local backups. Two minimum.
I would not rely on SI or RAID.
And all you need to boot from, and I'd have at least two, is a basic 30GB partition for Mac OS: a working copy of your system as is, a copy of last version installed also, AND, one "emergency" boot partition for disk maintenance and repairs.
Then use NAS as second line of backup for your data, disk images, etc.

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or re

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or remove windows partition.

Hi, Ralph,
The problem is that I did erase the partition, using disk utility, but I can't go back to my original disk size pre-partition, as disk utility won't let me do it and gives the message "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it won't let me select the third option to remove windows.

I have a G5 with Tiger to sell and want to erase all my data from it, but the cd drive won't work so I can't use the OS10 start up disk. Answers?

I have a G5 to sell and want to erase all my data from it, but the cd drive won't work so I can't use the OS10 start up disk. Any way to do it?

Do you have another Mac? If so, you can startup this one in "Target Disk Mode" (instructions here) and connect it to another Mac to delete the home folders (or the entire drive, if that's what you want).
One piece of advise, though: after deleting the data, and of course emptying the Trash, it wouldn't hurt to also securely erase the "free space" of the drive (instructions here) before disconnecting the old Mac from the new one. This can be helpful, since "deleted" data is often retrievable with ease unles it's written over after the deletion.

I Can't Erase the Empty Space with Disk Utility

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