Problem Partitioning LaCie External Firewire HD

So I unmount the partitions and try to erase everything so that I can write a new partition table to it using NTFS. However, I'm am unable just to clear the "partitions". (They are fronts to paritions that are used on the lacie HD to initiate formating depeding on the operating system they're attached to.
Pictures can be found in this album here:
http://imgur.com/a/jUZij

The problem is that you need to repair the "node structure error". If the included disk utility cannot repair it then you will need to use either Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro to do it. Until you get rid of that error you are going to have problems.
From what I have read Disk Warrior is the best solution to this problem.
There are some posts about it here:
http://forums.macnn.com/archive/index.php/t-149925.html

Similar Messages

Partitioning an external Firewire drive

Hi,
I'm trying to partition an external 150gb Lacie Firewire drive with the Disk Utility under OSX10.3.9 and I've gone through the Erase procedure and DU is telling me I'm left with 149.1gb after formatting.
So now under the partition tab I'm trying to set out the size of each partition and I know these sizes are gonna sound a bit random but bear with me so I want :-
3 partitions of 10gb = 30gb
6 partitions of 8gb = 48gb
1 partition of 71.1gb
After setting, naming and locking the first 9 partitions, when I get to the final partition, which I want to be 71.1gb, DU won't let me set a figure above 16.81gb.
Now I fully appreciate that disk sizes are, to a degree, 'approximate', that after formatting you do 'lose' a few gb's and that each partition will have a filesystem installed on it but where the heck am I losing 54.29gb of storage space from ?!!
I have experimented with fewer partitions and, to be fair, it seems you lose less space with less partitions but is it really the filesystems on each partition eating up that space ?
I'm using HFS+ (journalled).
Many thanks for any help you can give as this has been a real headache today !
Nick

Hi roam,
Many thanks for your continued input into this thread and my apologises for the delay in replying to your last post.
Anyway, I thought I'd give SuperDuper a go and downloaded v2.1.4 as you suggested and must agree that it's very simple to use. The backup took twice as long as my old way of backing up (restoring from the internal drive to the external drive) and I checked the log file for any errors and there weren't any, so all good there.
I again restarted with the option key held down and yet again I'm only ever presented with one drive icon to boot from, not two, so I'm really not sure why this is happening.
However, I've been giving this quite a lot of thought and I've come to the conclusion that if my internal system drive was to suffer a catostrophic failure (I'm touching loads of MDF here as I type that !!) and the drive is either wiped clean or damaged to the point that I replace it, I wouldn't be booting from my Firewire drive anyway, I'd be restoring from it, so I'd insert my install CD and reboot whilst holding down C, I'd then run Disk Utility and restore from my Firewire drive to the new internal drive.
So what I really want is a mirror image of my internal drive which is what my method of restoring via the restore route gives me.
Is that a correct hypothosis of have I missed something ?
Nick

Lion mysteriously erases SSD partition on external FireWire drive.

I'm not sure whether this is a problem with OS X, my SSD, or my external FireWire drive, so please bear with me.
Recently, I have been having some hardware problems on my MacBook Pro, and decided to send my computer off to be repaired. Before doing so, I took my Corsair Performance Pro SSD (still on firmware 1.0) out of my machine so that I could boot it from my FireWire 800 drive (Oyen Digital Minipro) onto the school computers.
Both times I have tried this (and on different machines!) I was able to successfully load my laptop installation. Then, after a few minutes, everything would suddenly freeze up (beach balls, et al) and I would have to shut down the computer. Afterwards, the system would not let me boot back into the external drive, and Disk Utility in the host OS would show that my partition had been completely erased, and that I would have to reformat the drive and restore from Time Machine.
Is it possible that Lion doesn't like being booted from FireWire drives? My OS X installation is still on 10.7.3 (as I have not had a chance to update yet) so maybe the FireWire driver has been fixed since then? Could this be a problem with my SSD? Or could my FireWire drive be malfunctioning? I have used this enclosure with a non-boot hard drive without any problems in the past.
Sorry this question is so broad, but I am at a complete loss.

In the "Current" Volume Scheme, the 8GB partition is on top. The 85GB is below that. Originally, the 20GB partition was between them. There is no grey mass i.e. free space in the middle.
Is there a grey mass anywhere? top? bottom?
In other words, do the two white sections that represent the active partitions fill the entire block, or is there any other space that's vacant?
All volumes on the drive are/were formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I'm not sure but, I think that corresponds to "GUID"...right?
No, Mac OS X Extended (whether journaled or not) is independent of the partition scheme in use.
The bottom of the Disk Utility window should report the partition format.

G5 Dual Core 2.3 Problem booting from external firewire running Tiger. HELP

I want to startup from an external Lacie 600GB firewire drive to run maintenance on my hard drive, I am able to choose it in the Start-up disk, but upon restarting my computer defaults back to the G5 for startup. I have also tried to boot up on the latest version on DiskWarrior, same problem. Please help me tell what I am doing wrong.
As always thank you for reading and replying to my post,
Sebastian

Perhaps you might try creating a bootable clone of your original installation rather than installing Tiger directly onto the external HD. That way, you can update it periodically, will have access to all your 3rd party apps, etc. I can recommend SuperDuper which you can use for free if you wish.

How do I back up my Boot Camp partition to external firewire drive?

I have a 15 GB Windows XP Boot Camp partition (FAT32). I want to back it up to a 120 GB external Firewire drive. (I know the backup won't be bootable). In OX X Disk Utility, I formatted the external drive as MS-DOS (FAT). I planned to do the backup using the Windows Backup utility.
However, when booted into WinXP, Windows will not recognize the external hard drive. I thought I might need to create a FAT32 partion of 32 GB or less on the external drive, but I apparently can't do this in OS X or Windows (since Windows doesn't recognize the drive).
Any suggestions on how to backup the Boot Camp partition will be appreciated. I'm mainly interested in preserving all programs and data. Ideally, a clone could be created that could be restored back to the original partition in bootable form, but from studying this and other forums, it dosn't seem to be easy to do this for a FAT32-formatted volume.

My goal was to create a bootable clone of my FAT32 Boot Camp partition, while at the same time increasing the size of the partition from 15 GB to 32 GB if possible. This is what I did:
1. As suggested in this thread, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image. I formatted it as MS-DOS (FAT), and made it 32 GB in size.
2. Used the Finder to copy all files from my 15 GB Windows XP partition to the new disk image.
The following steps were only to determine if the disk image is a viable backup:
3. Removed the internal hard drive with my original Win XP partition, and installed a new internal hard drive.
4. Used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32 GB Boot Camp partition on the new internal drive.
5. Inserted my Win XP installation disk and started the Windows installation. Formatted the new partition as FAT32. (I used the long rather than the quick format method--not sure if this was necessary.)
6. Continued the Windows installation to the point of restarting the computer, at which time I used the Option key to boot back into OS X.
7. Used the Finder to copy all the files from the 32 GB disk image to the new Boot Camp partition. (This overwrote a few Windows files installed by the aborted Win XP installation.)
8. Restarted and used the Option key to select the new 32 GB Boot Camp Partition. Windows booted as usual with all files, programs, etc. from the original 15 GB partition. Windows did complain about "new hardware" and required a restart, but all appears normal.
This indicates that the disk image containing all the files from my original Boot Camp partition is a viable backup, and can be used to restore the partition if necessary. I'm not sure if formatting the disk image as MS-DOS (rather than Mac OS extended) was necessary, or not.

Problems with LaCie external hard drive.

I bought a LaCie external hard drive about a month before leopard was released. I bought this with the intention of using it with time machine. This hard drive has USB and ethernet connections. When I updated to leopard I found out that the USB connection does not work with leopard, I contacted LaCie and they told me that I can only use ethernet with leopard. but time machine won't let me use it through ethernet.
Please respond with any way that I can use time machine with this hard drive.
If it helps it is the LaCie ethernet disk mini 500 GB model.

I have 5 Lacie's and they work with USB. 70% of the people out there will get the cheapest drives they can, and that will be a USB drive.
Here is how to format your drive.
Macintoch HD->Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities.
Have your Lacie plugged in and running then on the left side highlight it. You may have 2 listings for THAT drive here. The top entry will give you the for example "468 GB WD3435988345903" that is the one you want to highlight. The second or third or fourth on would be the name of the drive partitions you would name. or sub hard drives inside your main Lacie hard drive.
Here is my suggestion, You still need another form of backup if TM goes bad on you. I clone my HD on another partition on the same drive as my TM. I have 70 GB partition for the clone or backup. So I will give you this scenario.
Highlight your drive then click on "partition" in the headers to your right.
In Volume scheme hit 2 partitions
Then go down and click "options"
Hit "GUID Partition"
Your partitions will be named untitled 1 and 2
Highlight the "untitled 2" by clicking in it's square
There will be a small center dot between the two partitions, put your cursor on that dot while clicking and pull down the box to 50- 60 GB or what ever you feel your max HD space will be with all your pictures and movies I chose 70GB
Them you untitled 1 will be your TM partition
Go a head and name your partitions in the line to your right by clicking on the partition squares.
I put in Time Machine for #1 and Tom's Clone 12-29-07 and I change the date every time I clone or backup on this partition by clicking on the lower most part of the name of this partitions name on your desktop. You will get a blue highlight when you can add to it. The name/date change can be done on your desktop anytime.
Before you hit the final button to do this partition scheme, double check options on more tie that you have the GUID scheme checked.
Run this free program to use to clone your main drive in your new #2 partition as an added backup to TM.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Message was edited by: Tom Pfister1
Message was edited by: Tom Pfister1

Lacie external firewire hard drive not recognised

I have an intel iMac and I'm trying to use a "LaCie Big Disk with Triple Interface" on firewire 400 but it's like the OS doesn't see it, not even in Disk Utility. The drive is formatted properly and shows up just fine using USB. I plugged the external drive into an old powermac g4 on firewire 400 and it showed up fine there. I know the firewire ports work on my iMac are working because I put it in target disk mode and I could see it's files on my powermac over firewire 400. I tried swapping cables too, but no luck.
I was having this problem on 10.5.8 so I formatted and installed 10.6, but that didn't help. Does anyone know how to get this drive to work on firewire?

ChemBot01:
A guess. Could it be that your computer only works with Firewire 800 and not 400 but if you connected your computer to the external HD what I suggest shouldn't be the problem. The iMac I have only has 800 so I have to connect via USB whereas with the computer I had before had a 400 port but not this one. I can connect if I have a 400 to 800 connector. Anyway, just a thought.

Problem with an external Firewire HD

Hi
Up until yesterday, my mini was booting from my external HD (in a firewire enclosure). Suddenly, it started acting sluggish. I rebooted the mini and it couldn't find the Firewire HD. I messed a little with different booting options and finally unplugged the Firewire HD and hooked it to my Windows box. It recognised it as a HD but couldn't read anything on it, probably because it was not FAT32 or NTSF formatted. I hooked it again to the mac and VOILA, there it was again and I could even boot from it.
Same problem today except that this time I could boot from it. I tried analysing it or repairing it using the disk utility ( both from the installation DVD or from the internal mini HD) but all I got was some sort of "Node structure error".
I then tried to erase the drive using the disk utility. No luck, once again and then, no more Firewire HD. Whatever I do, no matter what I have tried, it's as if the **** thing has completely disapeared.
I was using my mini internal HD as a back up drive and I have a fresh back up (3 days old) so it's not catastrophic but I sure would like to have my Firewire disk back, as it's much faster than my internal Seagate 4200 HD.
I would appreciate your comments on this, please

The problem is that you need to repair the "node structure error". If the included disk utility cannot repair it then you will need to use either Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro to do it. Until you get rid of that error you are going to have problems.
From what I have read Disk Warrior is the best solution to this problem.
There are some posts about it here:
http://forums.macnn.com/archive/index.php/t-149925.html

Problems partitioning an external drive

My brother loaned me his external drive, so that I could clone my hard drive onto it before I reformat my whole drive. I plugged it in, and was astonished when I couldn’t put anything on it. I dug around the net an figured out that I had to partition the drive in order to be able to change permissions and be able to read and write onto to the drive. But for whatever reason, when I hit the “partition” button an icon pops up saying that “disk could not be unmounted.” What can I do to get over this problem?

Is there data on the drive now? If so, using Disk Utility to partition it will erase all of it. In order to clone your drive to it, it needs to be clean. That is no files on it. There are commercial apps available that can partition a drive without erasing it but they cost as much as a new external drive.
Rather than clone it to an external, buy a new internal drive and install it in your G4. You can get a 80-120GB drive for less than $50 and it takes about 20 minutes to install it. With two internal drives you can have additional storage and keep all your data backed up.
John

Problem with LaCie external HD

Have been using a LaCie 500 GB external HD hooked up to my iMac (OS X 10.8.2) via USB port for the past 4 months. Use it with Time Machine.
Lately it has been disconnecting by itself ... and just a few days ago the backups started to fail too. Using disk utility to check the LaCie says it needs to be repaired ... then says it can't be repaired, needs to be reformatted.
Tried changing it to another USB port (without doing anything else ot it) and now disk utility says it is ok and backups are working again.
Is this a problem with the USB port or with the external HD? Any suggestions?

Thanks maurits ... I'll play around with it and try to figure it out.

Using an NAS drive as the iTunes library (problem with Lacie external hd)

Hi,
I already have my iTunes library on an external hard drive (LaCie 320GB mini Hard Drive & Hub) which I absolutely NOT recommend. The drive goes in sleep mode every now and then and most of the time I have this big 4 sec blank between each song till the drive wakes up again
soooo painful.
Anyway, I am about to buy another external hard drive with an Ethernet interface (+ FTP and samba) Does anyone know a good product? Any problem running the iTunes library over the Ethernet network?
By any chance, if someone know a trick to cut the sleep mode of my external hard drive, that would be great as well.
Thanks!

Alexis, saw your mention of trying to put the iTunes library file on the network, and wondered if you would comment further on why you wanted to do that, and what happened to make it difficult. It sounds like what I'm trying to do.
I have all my music on a USB disk attached to my Airport Extreme base station. I have three Macs in the house - two on a 1G EtherNet and one MacBook on wifi. I would like to have each instance of iTunes use a common library, so that I can access my music from any of the three Macs. It seems that putting the Library file on the networked drive would do what I need, after telling iTunes on each Mac to use that library. Yes? No? Definite maybe? I'd appreciate any information you would share.

Problems reading my external firewire devices

It seems my 400 firewire port on my PB is fried or shorted. i cant read any device through it. my 800 port is fine, reads my 800 external drive fine, but when i try to route a 400 device either a drive or a camera through the 800 device and through the 800 port, the 800 drive ejects/removes itself from the system automatically...
any ideas on what to do or wh6y this happens?
rerally need a solution, hopefull not replacing the logic board would be good
thanks
eric

It may be you need to reset the 'FireWire' port.
1) Turn off your PB remove battery, go and make a nice cup of tea. Replace battery after about 20 mins or so and start it up, does it work now? No then try:
2) Reset PRAM and here are the instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Does it work? No then try:
3) Reset PMU here are the instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449#faq10
I have now run out of suggestions sadly so it may be time to contact Apple.
Hope you get it working!
Phil

Problems booting from external firewire drive

Here's a weird one...
I'm trying to help a buddy with a 3rd gen MBP and a new WD 'My Studio' firewire external drive.
He can mount and use the drive but is unable to boot from it. When starting up his machine with option, the drive doesn't show up as selection. The really odd part is the drive does work if plugged in with the USB cable!
The drive in question DOES work as expected on my 5th gen MBP with firewire. Further, I can stert my MBP in target disc mode and it will function as expected as a bootable external drive for his machine. The system in question was cloned with Carbon Copy Cloner. And again, it boots from my MBP.
I've tried different sets of cables (even though everything works on my system). I actually had him send the drive back for warranty replacement but of course the new one behaves the same way.
What could be the cause of apparently certain firewire drives not being bootable (but otherwise working) on a 3rd gen MBP? The intended workflow is to be studio/audio work so using the USB connection for a workaround would not be an option.
Any clues? Windows is not even installed on any of these machines!

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week!
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs. In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point. Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point. At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

Help!! External Firewire Problems

Hi All,
Please, please help me.
Ever since the purchase of my iMac G5, i have had major problems with the External Firewire. The first problems were similar to the current problems but i replaced both the hard drive and the enclosure. It would work, mount okay, then the next time not mount, on the occasions it did mount the finder froze up and i had to initialise a manual shutdown!
I formatted the new hard drive through disk utility on the Intel Mac on a level that would work on all mac,! allegedly!! I also have a 17" G4 iMac running 10.3.9, and as i still currently use both machines with the external drive and use it as a back-up, i did'nt want to limit it to the Intel system, just yet.
I currently have a 250Gb Samsung HDD 300 Ultra (2 partitions) encased in my new Icy Box Enclosure. But the problems persist, i have had a desperate drop out today, the Pram was reset, and it wants to intialize the drive as soon as it starts, i choose ignore and tried to repair through disk utility and recieve this message:
Verifying volume “disk1s10”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid B-tree node size
The volume needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Verifying volume “disk1s12”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Catalog file entry not found for extent
The volume needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
2 HFS volumes checked
2 volumes need repair
Can i resuce the data on these disks???, and is there a solution for the Intel Mounting issues, and stop the finder crashing!, I have also updated my firmware to the latest release.
Many thanks Martin

Hi Martin,
One thing I'm a bit confused about. You seem to call this an "Intel" iMac some of the time and a "G5 iMac" at other times. These are two quite different machines, need different OS software and so forth. I'm wondering whether you may have installed something that has caused it indigestion accordingly!
By way of example, the very latest release of TechToolPro (which I gather you have ordered) will work with both iMac G5 and iMac Intel computers, but earlier ones are G5 compatible only. DiskWarrior, also suggested in the thread, remains iMac PPC G5 only, and won't work on any Intel iMac.
One additional question. Have you had any other firewire devices attached apart from the problematic external when the problems have arisen? Problems with hubs, external burners or other drives, external iSights and the like, can sometimes be implicated in these sorts of issues, interupting data flow to the drive and resulting in corruption etc..
Cheers
Rod

Quicksilver lacie External FW Drive Problem

I just got a Lacie external Firewire 400 drive and neither the OS nor Disk Utility see it. In the System profiler I see this under Firewire:
Manufacturer: Unknown
Model: Unknown Device
GUID: 0x0
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
I have done the whole power down cycle thing as suggested in other threads and I have checked the Firmware of the drive enclosure with the Lacie update tool but same result. I had this drive connected and working on an XServe at work so i took it back there and walla - it shows up. I reformatted the drive via teh XServe and upon bringing it home to my trusty Quicksilver - same exact problem.
Help?

Thanks for the info! I'll try it as I have to take her apart and add a new HD.
Boy, your hammer line reminded me of several trash problems I've had besides the corrupted IMG files that caused me many freezes last week as I tried to copy them then several panic shutdowns as I tried to delete the fool things!
So I went hunting at this site and found a great post about trashing corrupted files:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3481524&#3481524
and I do believe...finally, the trash is empty.
This also resolves problems I've had with some system files from a little clam shell I helped a friend setup. Stupidly, I had copied the whole system over to my disk as a "just in case" back up and due to the embedded sys files, deleting them was impossible as my system thought I was trying to delete my own system files. I had tried all the basic force empty trash stuff I knew, then UNIX commands: chmod, chown, rm, etc, etc and nothing worked.
The simple terminal line found at the X-Lab (link on last post) solved it for me!
Careful with the syntax and go to site and read all the info available- one wrong move, you could delete the works!!!
Beauty!! My trash is empty!!
Quicksilver(2002) Dual G4 1 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.5G mem nVIDIA GeForce4 MX

Problem Partitioning LaCie External Firewire HD

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