I've got a beachball midway through formatting my hard drive. It is stuck at 'preparing to erase'

I was trying to format my hard drive for a clean install of Mountain Lion. It was going fine until I got a beach ball when the status hit "Preparing to erase". What should I do?

You're just going to have to do a hard reset to shut your computer down and power it back up with the Command and R keys held down whilst booting. This will get you back to your Recovery partition and you can try erasing your hard drive again for a 'clean' installation of Mountain Lion.
Good luck,
Clinton

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HT201376 I've erased and formatted the hard drive accordingly in order to reinstall OS X. everything went fine until about half way through the install. it just seems to stop. how long should this take? should i do something else to speed it up?

I've erased and formatted the hard drive accordingly in order to reinstall OS X. everything went fine until about half way through the install. it just seems to stop. how long should this take? should i do something else to speed it up?

About all you can do is wait until it finishes or you get an error message.

HT201250 How to recover iPhoto Library after format of hard drive?

I've recently reinstalled Lion onto my hard drive but I forgot to backup my iPhoto library. Is there any way of recovering this library? I also have an external hard drive that had Time Machine Backups but that hard drive has since gone through formats as well. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you

SOLUTION : iPhoto folder recovered after formatting hard drive by mistake.
I was able for recover my iPhoto library ( intact ) after formatting the hard drive by mistake.
On top of that I formatted it in FAT32 format. My iPhoto folder was huge 100GB with file and movies of all sort of formats. I kept it on a secondary hard drive of 500 GB. one day I was formatting flash drive for somebody which was 500Mb, seems similar to my 500GB and I formatted my hard drive by mistake. I realized the mistake a week after the person called me and said there is nothing in flash disk and I find a single file on my hard drive. Needless to say the earth disappeared underneath me. All my pictures for 10 years , 8000 thousand of them, cherished memories all gone. But was I determined to find them back and I know they are intact somewhere. My biggest fear was that formatting on MS-dos format might have really deleted them , but they were there. and here is how I got them back.
First I tried the Data recuse 3 software. I got the photos back, but they were all jumbled up. Long numerical file names and original dates were gone. No way I could sort it out back to the way it was before . So my target was to recover the iPhoto folder intact.
- I bought an external hard drive with 1tb space to retrieve the data.
- The software which did the miraculous job is called " STELLAR PHOENIX MAC DATA RECOVERY" .
- I ran a deep scan all night and came up with many volumes. volume-1 was the MS dos , volume 2 was a mac system,
- I tried MS dos volume first and there was nothing on it.
- I tried the 2 volume with mac system. It got all my files and some other system file.
- I could see the iPhoto folder and click on that only to recover. After that I went for my doc and other files later.
- It took hours to retrieve my iPhoto folder intact, The folder size was right and file were there in master folder.
- I checked in FINDER , opening iPhoto with "show content " and all my picture file were there with original date.
- BUT when tried opening it in iPhoto , there was nothing. it keep showing the wait icon and nothing shows up. Empty iPhoto.
- I tired starting iPhoto , holding command -option and tried building and repairing database, nothing worked.
- Then I got this software " iPhoto library manager" .
- downloaded, installed it and pointed it towards my iPhoto folder.
- It asked for space to rebuild a new iPhoto library with existing picture and folder.
I had another external hard drive , I used it to make a rebuild iPhoto library.
and there I GOT IT. only took three night of pain.
IMPORTANT:
I never touched my original formatted hard drive. Don't write anything on it until you are sure you have recovered everything. open and see files with your own eyes.
- I recovered the iPhoto on another hard drive and then built it on another hard drive . Yes its pain in the neck but well worth fixing your stupid mistake of not making a back up in the first place.
I hope this helps all who are looking for iPhoto recovery and their lovely memories.

Formatting a PC-formatted External Hard Drive to work in Mac OS

So I have a 300 gig external hard drive formatted for Windows XP with NTFS. I recently got a Macbook Pro and as it stands in Mac OS X the hard drive is read only. I can copy files from the hard drive to my Mac, but I can't edit files on the external HD or copy from my Mac to my external HD. This of course is a problem and so I need to reformat it to work in Mac OS. While I will not be using PCs anymore, if possible I would like for the external HD to be Mac and Windows compatible.
First things first I have to get all 300 gigs of files off the external HD in order to reformat it. This will be a pain but I have the means to do this. Once I get everything off, how and with what method should I reformat it to work in Mac? Should I use the HFS file system or MS-DOS? Also, what utility in Mac OS lets me reformat it. As I said, I probably won't be hooking up this external HD to Windows anytime soon, but if there is a way to format it in Mac to work with Windows, then fine.
So what exactly are my options here? I understand that I can format the hard drive in Mac OS with either MS-DOS or FAT32. I just don't know which is better/faster/more reliable in Mac OS, as I'm still a Mac newbie. I don't have files that are over 2 gigs as far as I remember, so I don't think that will be an issue. If it helps, it is mostly media files (videos, music). I've read up online about formatting a drive to work with Mac OS, but there's just so much info I'm getting confused. Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
So from what people are saying, I can format the drive in Mac OS as FAT32 (aka MS-DOS) and it will work fine between the two operating systems.
I've been reading more though and it seems that FAT32 drives can not be larger than 130 gigs? Or is that just for partitions.
I have a 350 gig hard drive and I don't plan on having any partitions. Can I just format the drive as FAT32 in Mac OS and the whole 350 gigs will be available? There's so much conflicting info in articles I've been reading.
thanks

How to Format Toshiba Hard-Drive for Mac with Parallels?

Hello,
I recently bought a Toshiba Hard-Drive with the following features:
500GB
It is a Canivo Basics 3.0
It is USB 3.0 and 2.0 portable hard drive
It has already been formatted NTFS for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8
The box says that it can be reformatted for Mac
I have a Macbook Pro with Retina Display that I bought this year in late March/early April.
It runs OS X Mavericks, and Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac.
I would like to reformat it so that I can use it on my laptop both with Windows and Mac OS at the same time. I do not wish to use a partition as I want to access the hard drive through Mac and Windows at the same time on my laptop and I also want to be able to access the Mac things on a Windows computer and vice versa.
I have never formatted a hard drive before, and I would like to use a completely safe software, or no software at all, if it is possible.
I am sorry but I don't have a very high knowledge of this.
Thanks,
Sandy-Wood

It would be easier, using Parallels, just to format the drive for "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". You can see it both in the Windows/Parallels and the Mac side. Leaving it formatted as NTFS is not going to allow you to access (write to) the drive unless you use third-party software. Formatting it for Mac lets you use it, as I said, on both the Parallels VM and the Mac side.
If you were using Boot Camp, I would advise leaving it formatted as NTFS and purchasing NTFS for Mac to access the drive on both OS's. You can mitigate that by formatting the drive for Mac:
Good luck,
Clinton

Transfer photos from PC to Mac - how to format ext hard drive?

Hi, I'd like to transfer jpegs from my old PC to my new Mac. I had already put my files on an external hard drive but when I plugged it into the Mac, it couldn't read it. I got a prompt to re-format it, which I did not do.
From reading discussions here, it looks like I first need to format a hard drive on my Mac, then copy the files from the PC, then transfer to the Mac? But the explanation is over my head - could anyone explain how to do it in plain terms? Thanks so much!

Hi there, if you want both OS's to read the external drive, format it as FAT32. I would do this from your PC as I have had problems with a PC not being able to read a drive formatted by the MAC. There are also other alternative. Or there is a third party alternative called Macfuse using the NTFS-3G plugin.
It is a free opensource project that allows your MAC to read and write to a NTFS drive. So you could actually connect your PC's drive to the Mac and get whatever you need or add.
Hope this helps,
Glynn

Formatting NAS hard drive as Mac OS Extended HFS+

I just got a NAS enclosure for my home LAN and two SATA hard drives to fit.
Installed fine, even using the Windows-oriented browser interface installation.
The drives show up nicely in the finder, and some files copy over without difficulty. HOWEVER, some don't. I'm pretty sure that the problem is that the install utility formatted the hard drives in Windows format, because the files that they will not now accept are ones with Windows-disallowed filenames, such as those with long filenames or Windows-illegal characters.
SO:-
I suspect that my problem would be solved if I could re-format the drives in the NAS enclosure to Mac OS Extended HFS+ format. BUT, the Windows-oriented installation utility provided by the NAS manufacturer (Linksys -- don't believe them when they glibly say their NAS boxes are Mac-compatible!) doesn't offer Mac formatting.
And unfortunately, while the NAS drives show up nicely in my Mac finders (both 10.3.9 and 10.5.5), they don't appear in Disk Utility, which is where I usually go to format hard disks.
SO:
Is there a way to format a NAS disk in Mac format over my home LAN?
As a workaround, i could try temporarily installing the SATA drives internally in my G4 and format them that way, then put them back in the NAS enclosure. But it would be a bit of a kluge, and I'd have to re-transplant them every time I needed to undertake disk maintenance.
Any ideas, anyone? Thanks v. much.

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.

Not able to view exFAT format external hard drive in my macbook pro 10.8.2.

I have formatted my hard drive in exFAT format from a windows notebook. I am not sure what to do as I am not able to view my hard drive in my macbook.
Can somebody please help me out in this regard.?

Try connecting the exFAT drive back to the Windows notebook and use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your Taskbar.
Run a updated malware scan and/or remove any original data and reformat the drive again.
Your issue doesn't appear to be widespread, so I'm leaning towards something that got messed up somehow.
Mac's can read/write MBR/GUID and FAT32/exFAT drives, only can read NTFS, so it shouldn't be having a problem.

Can I bring files from a NTFS formatted external hard drive (from Windows XP 32 bit desktop) to my new macbook pro retina?

Can I bring files from a NTFS formatted external hard drive (from Windows XP 32 bit desktop) to my new macbook pro retina?

What are these files you are trying to copy over?
If they are program specific and there is no program on a Mac to read them then you'll have to find either a Mac version of that program or one that does the same thing and can read those files.
The file extension should not change just because you connect a NTFS formatted drive to a Mac computer. A Word Document is still a .doc/.docx ad the same for all other office type programs. Music files with an extension of .MP3, or whatever, should read the same on both system. Same goes for all other files like images with a .JPG extension.
Yes I would network them.
I would not use Migration Assistant. There is nothing on your Windows PC that can be used on the Mac other than your personal data files. No programs or settings can be carried over from Windows to OS X.
marimbapony1 wrote:
Also, when I view the files from the external hard drive, they show up as .nbz and are not recognized by any program on the Mac. Should I just abandon the hard drive option and start sharing files through the LAN approach?

Format new hard drive

Hello,
I have some issues with the new hard drive I am currently installing. My old hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro (Mid 12) and I bought a new hard drive to use. The problem is that I can not erase and format the hard drive to work with the operation system in the Disk Utility. I managed to partition it on a different mac, but then only changed the external settings. Is there any way I can change the internal settings through a USB with a different MacBook?
Thank you for any suggestions!
Tobias

Do this:
Install OS X Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your newly installed 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.
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. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
This should restore the version of OS X originally pre-installed on the computer.

I just formatted my hard drive and I need to find out what my "wireless password is"

I just formatted my hard drive and I need to find out what my "wireless password is". I was in a hurry when I did format my PC that when I got to given my wireless a password, I used the same one as before. Now I have tried to finding what it is for my other products, I don't know where to look. Do I or can I change the password without losing anything? Need help PLEASE
[Personal Information Removed]

Hi:
You need to read your router's configuration instructions on how to access the router's menu.
Hopefully you can access that and in the wireless security menu you will find the passkey to use.
Paul

I format my hard drive and now dont have a sync key to access to my account, please help me!

Please Help me! My computer was infected by a virus, and I format my hard drive and reinstall the OS. Now I installed Firefox 4 beta 10 but don't have access to my sync account because i don't the "Sync Key" and don't use Firefox in other devices... please please help me to access to my account I need recover my bookmarks and configuration, Thanks.

Sorry, without your Sync Key you're out of luck. It is used as the decryption key for the data that is stored on the Sync server.

Can i use windows migration assistant to transfer files from my windows formatted external hard drive to my mac?

I have a windows formatted external hard drive and a macbook pro. I was wondering if i could use the windows migration assistant to transfer files from my external hard drive to the mac

No.
Just connect the drive to your Mac. The Mac can read most Windows formats (it cannot WRITE Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) formatted drives.

I'm getting this problem when trying to update my iphone 3gs it says that the iphone software could not be contacted and I went on youtube got some advise to go into my hard drive to fix the error I have nothing in my host file please help me if you can

I'm getting this problem when trying to update my iphone 3gs it says that the iphone software could not be contacted and I went on youtube got some advise to go into my hard drive to fix the error I have nothing in my host file please help me if you can this is all new to me.

Read this: iOS 4: Updating your device to iOS 5 or later
... oh I think it is a 3gs or a 3
This makes a difference. What does it say in Settings > General > About?

Can I install my time machine back up onto a properly formatted external hard drive?

I have a MacBook Pro with a 750GB harddrive, with 500+ Gb of data on it. Just before I traverse to Europe, I did a TimeMachine back up.
I now want to give my Mac to a friend, and buy a AirMac when I get home. Even if I get the one with the largest drive it will not hold the full 500+'back up.
I have an 8 year old Mac Book pro at home as well. It will be a few months before I can buy the new AirMac. So my question is ....
Can I install my current backup on a properly formatted external hard drive, and will it then run like a computer --until I get my new AirMac?
Thanks for your help (and please don't be too tough on me for what may see to de a dumb question)
Soper777

The Time Machine backup is not bootable
You will have to install Leopard first

I've got a beachball midway through formatting my hard drive. It is stuck at 'preparing to erase'

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