OSX formats usb external drive as well as firewire drive

Hello,
The following happened to me: I have a Western Digital Studio II SE in RAID 0 configuration attached on FW400 to my Macbook, the drives are formatted in FAT32 so I can use the drive in Windows as well. However I decided to format the drive in HFS+ and while OSX was formatting the drive I attached a Lacie external drive on the USB port.
Much to my surprise and horror OSX not only formatted the Western Digital disk but also the Lacie drive destroying my entire photo archive of 2 years. So now I'm in the painfull process of trying to recover what can be recovered
The only thing I would like to know how the heck this could have happened! Is this a common bug/ behaviour?
Thanks in advance

Hi and Welcome to Apple Discussions ...
"while OSX was formatting the drive I attached a Lacie external drive on the USB port"
I don't think it's a good idea to connect peripherals while formatting a drive. I'm sorry you lost your photos though... there is a good data recovery for Mac available here; http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
I don't supposed you kept any of those images in an iPhoto Library????
Carolyn

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cheers
-j-

MS-DOS format (or FAT32) will be fine for both Mac and PC. However there is a 4GB file size limit with FAT32.
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Look at this page for more information on a dual partition drive for Mac and Windows.
http://macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812
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I have been using a Lacie 500GB USB external drive allocated as a backup disk for time machine. Over the last couple of weeks, the disk has been spontaneously ejecting itself from the desktop. This could happen when not backing up to time machine, or during the backup.
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I was able to do a simpler format function on the disk via disk utility, the disk will mount, but the allocated disk space previously used by time machine is still present, and the format has only done that remaining space on the disk.
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Welcome to Apple Discussions.
When you use Disk Utility to erase totally you need to click on the LaCie drive name not the name that appears on the desktop. Select how many partitions you want and give each partition the name you want it to have and perhaps also the partitioning scheme and other options that are available, then erase.
Doing this will of course make all that is on the drive unavailable to you.
These are LaCie's directions for their drives.
Some LaCie drives might also have firmware updates available - worth a check on their website.
Note that LaCie seem to have 2 yr warranty on their drives, at least the one I looked at on their website. If the drive is younger than this you might have a warranty claim.

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Thanks!

In OS X, there's an app called Disk Utility that allows you to do whatever you want with hard drives and external drives.
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USB external drive not readable by mac but readable by windows

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Hi Schmerz Meister;
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let me start by saying i love my new intel imac i bought in march. its doing what i need it to do and much much more.im going to need backup space soon for photos,video clips,audio ect. i was hoping for any advice on what are my best options for usb external drives.
p.s.im waiting till i can back up all my OSX stuff before i install bootcamp
looking foward to playing around with that !
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My advice is to not bother with USB. Get a USB/FireWire drive instead. It is more flexible - meaning you can use it on older Macs and PCs without USB - without sacrificing the speed and reliablility of FW.
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USB External Drive Trouble

Back in April, I hooked a 500 GB USB external drive to my iMac in order to run time machine. All worked fine until October 17. Yesterday Time Machine popped up with a message telling me it had not backed up in 10 days and I should figure this out. At this point, I noticed that the external drive was no longer mounted on the desktop, although I could see it in Disk Utility. The POSIX error came up. After a long search on the forum and fighting with a PC in the house, I was able to reformat the drive and let Time Machine do its thing.
The initial backup went great and it seemed to back up every hour until 12 am or so it says. Once again, I came down this am and the drive is not mounted and not showing in Disk Utility. I turned it off and on again and now the computer tells me it needs to be initialized.
What in the world is going on? Is it related to USB control and SL? Is it a Time Machine issue? Should I reformat the drive and see if I can simply copy files to the drive and see if it stays mounted that way?
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Any help would be greatly appreciated before I spend more money on a new drive.
Debbioe

Thanks, that one's not on my suspect list... yet
Good luck with the replacement, I'm sure it will be fine. When you get it remember to format for Mac OS X.
1. Launch Disk Utility
2. Click the "Erase" tab
3. Select your entire external drive on the sidebar (the uppermost icon).
4. Format: "Mac OS Extended Journaled"
5. Name the Disk (Time Machine, or whatever) only the name of the volume will show in Finder.
-mj

MDT 2012 deploy OS from USB external drive failed - need to unplug and plug it once again

We are using MDT 2012 and deploying Windows 7 using media (USB external hard drive). We can successfully deploy Windows 7 32 bit using this method but there is a problem with deploying Windows 7 64bit. This problem appears only on HP EliteBook 840. We can
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Not sure what's going on here. Is this a USB "Flash" drive or a USB "Hard Drive". There *Is* a distinction.
I *thought* that MDT would copy itself to the c:\minint\scripts folder to continue installation.
Next time, when you see this error, Press Shift-F10 to get into a cmd.exe prompt. Can you find litetouch.vbs on any of the drives? Does the USB Drive appear?
IF in fact, the USB Drive is not appearing after the 1st reboot, then you have a problem. Why did the USB 3.0 driver not install. Check the Driver Installation Logs to verify.
Keith Garner - keithga.wordpress.com

How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

How do I format an external drive with mountain lion?

Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
select the external drive in the left pane
partition and format in the right pane

Format an external drive from mac to pc

How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?

kwnola wrote:
How do I format an external drive (My Passport) from mac to pc (iOS Snow Leopard) without losing my data?
1: Remove the data off the drive
You can do this by installing MacDrive on the Windows PC to access the Mac HTFS+ format
Or you can use a Mac to remove the data.
2: Format the drive on the PC (preferably) by right clicking on the drive and choosing format
A: If data on the drive will have larger than 4GB sized files, then the format you want is exFAT
(if your using Windows XP, you can download exFAT from Microsoft)
B: If the data on the drive will always have less than 4GB sized files, then you should choose FAT32 for most compatibility with all other machines.
3: If you can only format the drive on the Mac then open Apple's Disk Utility in the Utilities folder
Select the drive on the far left, it should have the makers name and a size, then click Partition.
Now select the box and click Options: MBR Then select Format: exFAT or MSDOS (FAT32) and click Apply.
4: If any chance you need to secure delete any data remaining on the drive form being recovered, use the Erase with Zero (or 7x for very secure) before formatting.
Note: Formatting a drive on the PC there will be a option for NTFS, this is for access by Windows only, but software can be installed on the Mac to read/write this format.
If you use exFAT or FAT32, the Mac can read and write this format just like Windows can, no need for extra software.
Linux can read/write just about any format.

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.

I want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read and write ,what should i do?

i want to format my external drive so that my new imac and my pc can read

Start by partitioning the drive as required for the Mac:
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 Apply 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.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Now click on the Erase tab in the main menu, then select ExFAT from the Format Type dropdown menu. Click on the Erase button. This format is read/write on both the Mac and the PC. If you have a problem with it on the PC, then format the drive the same way using the Windows formatter.

OSX formats usb external drive as well as firewire drive

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