Partitioning my External Hard Drive Using Disk Utility in Mac?

I have a 1 TB external hard drive which I've been using for a year now. It already has 200 GB used space, having approximately 100 GB of movies. Since the format of the single partition it has is MS-DOS FAT32 (so that it can be used on my Mac, Windows and PS3), I can only store files not bigger than 4 GB. Some of the HD movies I have range from 6-8 GB and I can't transfer them to the hard drive and they're occupying so much space on my laptop. Now, I wanna know if I can split the hard drive into 2 or 3 partitions (please recommend whether to use Mac OS Extended (Journaled), ExFAT or both) without having to undergo the process of backing up my 200 GB worth of files onto another hard drive; it's too tedious. Is there a way for me to directly convert some space of my single partition into a different partition with a different format while the hard drive still contains my old files? Thanks!

You can add a partition to the drive. In Disk Utility select the drive and then select the Partition Tab. The current partition layout is shown.
Grab the resize handle in the lower righthand corner of the partition display and drag it the size you want. Click in the new empty gray area and click the + sign, the new partition will be displayed. Enter the information for the partition, name and format and apply.
As for the format you should use it depends on how you will use the partition. If you will only be using it with the Mac then OS Extended (Journaled) is the way to go.
While this procedure is safe for the data on the disk as always whenever doing any system work like this a good working backup is highly recommended. And if you get to a point where you are not sure of what you are doing you can select revert to restore the settings as they are now, at anytime before you hot apply.
good luck

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How Do I partition an external hard drive using disk utility?

I have a 500 GB external hard drive that I want to set up so that half the space is for Time Machine backup and the other half as a simple flash drive that will be compatible with all types of computer operating systems?

A terrible idea. Never use a backup drive for anything but a backup drive. Get another drive for experimenting.
You can partition an external drive no differently than an internal drive.
Drive Preparation
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 desired from the drop down. 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.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Problem partitioning external hard drive with Disk Utility

I'm trying to create a new partition in disk utility in an external hard drive using disk utility and every time I click Apply it says that "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and can't continue. Quit and relaunch Disk Utility". It is a 3TB hard disk and I already created the first partition of 2 TB, and when I click the + symbol to add a 1 TB partition and click Apply is when the error shows up. I have restart the mac, unplugged the hard disk but the error still shows up. Anyone has any idea??? Thanks for your help in advance
David

I solved this issue. I was able to create the partition with the format MS-DOS and then I erased it to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Now it is working OK. Hope this help someone

Unable to verify or repair my external hard drive with disk utility, reason being ...

Hello there,
I have been facing this problem: After I started getting an error 50 error while trying to view in Quicktime player a movie which I had exported from FCPX today, I found that I was not even able to trash the movie [this was a test movie used for export and I had no need for the same]. A little while later when I opened FCPX, I found this message pop up:
Got a little worried and then tried to verify and repair my hard drives using disk utility, but I could neither verify nor repair the disk. What should I do now?

Hello Klaus,
I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
I have been using my Seagate 2 TB drive [2 USB] with a FW adapter and was using FW connectivity for the past several months without any problems. About 2 months ago I added a 2 TB Lacie, FW, to my workflow and this EHD was daisychained to the Seagate. Had been facing no problem with this arrangement until today.
Now let me try to tell you what I had done:
I ejected the Seagate drive with the intention of reconnecting it again. But, no, when I tried to reconnect, this message came up:
After several attempts, I did this, connected the Lacie by FW to the FW port on the Mac and connected the Seagate by 2 USB. Was I glad to see my Seagate HD icons shining in all their glory on my desktop! I utilised the services of disk utility and was informed that these prodigal sons were absolutely fine.
I also tried to do this: empty the trash. Was I happy to hear the sound of files being cast out?
Well, well, at least I will be able to get some peaceful sleep now! I have not yet opened FCPX, but I trust it will also be reading the Seagate HD once again.
Good night and thanks for being helpful.

IMac Finder cannot see external hard drive but Disk Utility can

I have a WD external hard drive and it has been attached to my iMac for a year or two. About two months ago I upgraded to Lion 10.7.5 and hard drive still worked. Then suddenly about a week ago the iMac no longer sees the external hard drive in Finder.
I have connected the hard drive to the iMac with different USB cables and into different ports and it makes no difference so deduce there is no issues with the cables or the ports. I have connected the hard drive to an old Macbook and it can see the harddrive and read some of the info but I really need the hard drive attached to the iMac as I store all my music and photos on the external hard drive.
I read another thread and someone asked if you can see the hard drive in Disk Utility. I tried this and Disk Utility can see the hard drive.
What does this mean? Any suggestions as to how to get the iMac to see the hard drive so I can access the data on it?
I dont really know how Disk Utility works therefore if that is any help to me.
thanks

Open the Finder.
From the Finder menu bar click Finder > Preferences then select the General tab.
Make sure: External disks is selected.

I create a new partition in an external hard drive with disk utility. Now it says mounting disk and it's taking forever. Is that normal? Please help!

I have an external hard drive from seagate. Tonight I decided to give it a try and add a new partition to it so I could have a bootable version of mountain lion in it it just in case of emergency and no internet. After creating the partition, disk utility says "mountain disk", and its been doing it for at least 20 minutes and not moving... Any ideas? btw, now the external drive is not even showing on the left-side bar...
Thanks!

I would try reformatting the drive and creating the partition again. Make certain that you erase the drive and format it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and the partition the drive.
What you describe is not normal... try again.
Clinton

Can't use or fix external hard drive in Disk Utility or Terminal

I have a 1TB Toshiba external USB drive that I was using for Time Machine and other storage. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally unplugged it when it was in the "Preparing Backup" stage of Time Machine.
Since then, when I plug it in, the light on the drive goes on and it spins, but it doesn't show up on the desktop or according to Time Machine. It DOES show up in Disk Utility with the correct partition showing. However, I have tried to erase and partition the drive and I keep getting the message that Disk Utility can not unmount the drive. I tried using Terminal to force unmount the drive and it also failed.
When I run the repair on the physical drive in Disk Utility, it says everything is fine but when I run it on the partition within the drive, I get the message, "Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
No using the drive, no repairing, no unmounting, no partitioning, nothing works.
Any suggestions to simply make it usable. I don't care about the data on it, I just want to be able to clean it and start again OR access the data.
Thanks!

Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and try to partition the drive. If you can't, it's not working (or perhaps the cable is damaged.)

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.

How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

forget about that and just use the free APP Superduper
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)

10.4.10 will show external hard drive in Disk Utility (in turn, mount)

Here's the problem in a nutshell. When I'm running 10.4.10 my Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (installed in an external enclosure) will not show up in Disk Utility (in turn also unable to mount). My DVD-RW burner will work, the enclosure is fine. When I boot off of the Mac OS X Install CD and run Disk Utility the drive and its partitions display. I did an archive and install and they were back in Mac OS X (10.4.7). - Rather than using Software Update, I decided to download the 10.4.10 Combo update manually and install (with the drive ejected and unplugged of course). Same issue once booting in Mac OS X 10.4.10...
Before I do an archive and install again, and revert to 10.4.9 indefinitely, is there anything I can try. I did googling, deleted some preference/cache files with no success.

This bug popped up after 10.4.9 was released and many folks (myself included) have experienced the same problem - after the install external hard drives, both FireWire and USB, are no longer accessible or visible.
In fact, I'm searching the discussion boards now to see if the 10.4.10 update fixed this. Apparently it has not.
Here are some other threads about this and 10.4.9 that might be of use to you:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=897541
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=892387
I finally reverted to 10.4.8, which perfectly recognizes my external drives, and will not update until I know this bug has been fixed. As far as I know, reverting is unfortunately the only way to fix this issue.:(

Seagate 1.5 TB external hard drive and Disk Utility

I have a Seagate 1.5 TB external hard drive. Up until recently it was working fine. I noticed that things stored on it were starting to take longer to open up. There was a relatively constant clicking noise on it, not just when Time Machine was backing up my files. I finally ran Disk Utility and it said that the volume needed to be repaired. Ever since that time the hd is not showing up on my desktop or in my finder. I used the startup disk and went into disk utility but it doesn't appear there. When I turn on the computer in regular mode and go to disk utility it is there, though. When I click "Repair Disk", though, nothing happens. Any suggestions? Do I need to just erase the disk and reformat? I was able to use a program called Data Rescue to get the most important files, but I'd rather not start from scratch.

Hi jc
Can't say exactly what's wrong or what happened. But sense you have recovered your important files your best bet is to just reset the Partition Scheme and re-Format the drive instead of trying to repair it.
1. select the drives first icon and then click the Partition tab
2. under Volume Scheme: for current select 2 Partitions +(2 in your case, 1 for TM and 1 for other files)+
3. now adjust the size of partitions by clicking on and holding the little dot between the partitions. +(you will probably want to allocate at least 1GB for time machine and the rest for misc. files)+
4. click the Option button right below that and select GUID Partition Table, then the OK button
5. then under Volume Information Name the Partitions the larger Time Machine, the smaller whatever
6. then for Format: select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
Optionally if you have say over 500GB of data on your Internal HD it would be best to set that 1.5GB up with just 1 Partition for Time Machine only and use a second drive for misc. files.
Now that you have the External HD properly Partitioned and Formatted open the Time Machine Preference and set it up to use the Time Machine Partition.
Dennis

External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

I am having problems with a particular external hard drive. Device is a Transcend StoreJet 25M (640GB) currently formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It was previously formatted in FAT32, exFat, and also Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It started giving me problems when I used it to store all my music on it. My iTunes library and music files were all stored on it, and at one point iTunes started acting funny - it would play a song for a few seconds, pause, play for a further few seconds, pause again, and so forth. I decided to stop using it and when I shifted the iTunes library to the Mac internal hard drive and the music file into another external hard drive, iTunes worked fine. So I figured it must be a problem with the external hard drive itself.
I recently reformatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and transfered some data on to it (include a back up of the music folder). I noticed that Spotlight keeps trying to index the drive but never actually managed. Times indicated for indexing runs into days. The hard drive tends to be slow to load files expecially when there are multiple folders and tiers, and is generally unreliable. It occasionally unmounts, or when I try to unmount it I get an error saying it cannot unmount because it is being used (but no indication as to which app is using it even if all apps are closed except for Finder).
I tried repairing it using disk utility. The attached image shows the results. It seems that it can't be repaired by disk utility. At this point, and after much deliberation, I would have to questions:
1. Should I just smash the thing on the floor?
2. Is there another application I could try and repair it with?
3. Even though I have reformatted it several times, it keeps giving me the same problem. When I do a disk verification of the hard rive itself it all seems fine, however when I do a disk verification or repair of the volume I get the error shown in the image. Is this a problem being caused during formatting?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, I forgot to attach image....
Message was edited by: TheSpoon

How can I initialize an external hard drive when disk utility won't work?

Have a Seagate 300 GB external firewire drive. Formatted it for Mac. Had worked great and then one day it would not mount, got message box with choices of "initialize", "ignore" and 'eject". Clicking initialize, disk utility comes up with only the "first aid" button showing active. When I click on it nothing happens. As far as I can tgell there are no other options
Any suggestions on how I can repair this drive or recover data would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Jim

OK, I suspect First Aid may be blank since Disk Utility "sees" the device but does not think there's anything on it.
1. How about if you select the drive and then click the Erase tab?
2. Also, what happens if you connect the drive, select Ignore, then open Disk Utility? Does the drive show up?
3. What's your objective here? Do you want to try to recover data from the drive, or simply erase it? If you're looking to recover data from the drive, see my "Data Recovery" FAQ.
4. Do you know what happened before the problem arose? For example, was there a power outage or was the cable or drive suddenly disconnected before the drive was Ejected? Any of these events can result in the drive's partition map being corrupted, leading to the kind of problems you're seeing.
5. Did you build this FireWire drive? That is, buy and enclosure, buy a drive, and install the latter in the former? If so, have you checked the connections?
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

HT1553 How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
- Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
- Could it be because the external hard drive is encrypted?
Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
Any clue?

I always advise Mac users to never:
encrypt a disk
set a firmware password
In my experience they cause more loss of data than they are worth.
On Leopard I always use the latest free Carbon Copy Cloner to backup and clone disks - it is so simple to clone to either a disk or disk image. The free version may not be compatible with later OSs.
As you appear to be on the wrong forum I will follow this with my standard message.
Whilst it may not be your fault I am afraid it appears that your post is on a forum which is not the best for your OS. It will save the time of the unpaid volunteers here, and may resolve your issue faster, if you could examine the list below and see if there is a more appropriate forum to which you could direct your question.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
OS X 10.7 Lion
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
OS X 10.5 Leopard
OS X 10.4 Tiger
OS X 10.3 and earlier
OS 9, OS 8 & System 7
OS X Technologies
OS X Server
iPad
iPhone
iPod
Other

Cannot backup macbook onto external hard drive in disk utility

I can't get past the section of repair disk it says in red
Unused node is not erased ( node = 81)
Invalid leaf record count
( it should be 2353 instead of 2354)
Invalid node structure
The volume macintosh had could not be verified.
Then it says A few other things then error disk utility can't repair disk
Also under S. M. A. R. T status it says failing

I think you're saying your internal drive is giving that message, which means you need to replace it. If I were you, I'd get a new drive and put it in an external enclosure. You don't say what machine or OS X version, but assuming you're on something fairly recent, boot into the Recovery partition by holding down the Command and R keys at startup. First use Disk Utility to prep the internal drive, then install the OS. Once it's done, try to run Migration Assistant to move your stuff to the external drive. When that's finally done, swap the new drive and the failing one.
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Aluminum-Enclosure-EC-TB4P/dp/B005EIGUD4/ ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1395497340&sr=8-3&keywords=2.5+enclosure

Partitioning my External Hard Drive Using Disk Utility in Mac?

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