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

Similar Messages

  • Windows and OS-X partitions on external drive

    Has anyone had any experience/problems with partitioning an external drive for OS-X and Windows?
    How about 3 partitons: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS. Or is that pushing my luck too far?
    I just received a new LaCie, primarily for backing up Vista Ult 64-bit, but if I can also use it for XP and OS-X that would be great.
    Any information will be most appreciated.
    Message was edited by: nerowolfe

    Moonlight Mac wrote:
    I've used an external USB2 drive to boot XP, but it is a very dicy process, and not really worth it in the end. You can slipstream USB boot support into the XP installer, but when you are done, you won't have virtual memory support (no pagefile). It also requires that the internal drive be removed during installation (if XP sees an internal drive, it will insist on attempting to use it for a pagefile.)
    I've done the same with a 4GB flash memory card... but booting was hit or miss.
    I've partitioned my internal into 2 HFS and 1 NTFS partition, and that works very well when combined with MacDrive on the PC side. I'd stick with using the external as just a backup device or for OSX (works best with firewire.)
    I am not looking to boot XP although that would be nice, but simply to create a backup on the drive. I use Norton Ghost, which does allow a boot, or sorts, into the backup in order to restore a system.
    But more, I was interested in an NTSF partition for Vista on this MBP. I have not used Vista's built-in backup program so I don't know how it works, but my thoughts were to partition the 500GB into multiple partitions and use them for XP, Leopard and Vista and a CCC clone of my two Leopard OSs.
    Say, 3 HFS partitions for clones and storage, 1 FAT32 for XP and 1 NTFS for Vista, making 5 in all.
    The 2 HFS partitions are probably easy. It was the other two, FAT32 and NTFS that I was concerned with.
    I guess I will plug it in and use DU and see what happens. I have never used DU for NTFS or FAT32 on an external drive.
    As long as the drive is empty, I have nothing to lose and lots of experience to gain, right?

  • Basic Question:  How to partition an external drive and then set up TM?

    Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
    1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
    2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
    3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
    Thanks! Happy New Year!

    coffeecoffee wrote:
    Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
    1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
    select the whole drive (the model, not the name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions. set the partition scheme to GUID in options. set the format to mac os extended journaled. hit apply.
    2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
    in system preferences->Time machine.
    also see TM 101 for basic usage instructions.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
    3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
    it depends on your computing habits but it's generally recommended to have TM drive to be at least 2-3 times bigger than the total amount of data you are backing up.
    Thanks! Happy New Year!

  • Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music?

    ...or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    (Secondary question: would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder)

    Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music? or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    I see no good reason to create a separate partition unless you're backing up with Time Machine. TM prefers to have it's own volume, so in that case partitioning would probably be a good idea.
    would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder.
    No, probably not. As long as you're not getting the drive too full - opinions vary but about 20GB remaining should be plenty for most uses - you probably won't see any overall change in performance just from moving the iTunes content.
    Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

  • Why did my event library stopped showing my partitions and external drives?

    The event library stopped recognizing my computer partitions and my external hardrive. It looks like all events are available, just not organized by partitions and drives. The partitions and external drive still show up in the project library.

    I don't see anything like what you mentioned... " having a folder at the root level that emulates a camera, a folder with a name like DCIM or Private." Here are the windows showing the files on the user/HD, the tutorial image and the external drive. You can see the Final Cut Folders in each. In the past, I would see each of these in the Event Library so I could create a new event wherever I want to store it. I have also included a screen shot of FCPX showing the Project Library. It still shows the various devices, as I am used to seeing in the Event Library.

  • Time Machine and partition on external drive

    Planning to buy a big external drive, but, is it possible to partition the external drive and make TM work on one ?

    Absolutely, in fact it is recommended to give TM its own partition. Use the first partition of the drive (that's the one that ends up at the top of the list in Disk Utility).
    Make sure the partition is double, if not three times, the size of what you will be backing up.
    Note that you have the option (Sys Prefs-TM-Options) to exclude drives and folders from backups. This may save a lot of space and is useful for the applications folder (as you likely have that stuff on CD/DVD), for music (if you have it on CDs), the downloads folder etc; see [this page|http://www.ryanblock.com/2008/05/good-folders-to-exclude-from-time-machine -backups] for more ideas on what to exclude so as not to backup unnecessary stuff. Also, if you work with scratch disks (in Photoshop or video applications, for instance), exclude them as well as that's just unnecessary.
    /p

  • If i partition an external drive do i need to erase it?

    Hi,
    I partitioned an external drive without erasing it first.
    Do I need to erase it now that it has been partitioned?
    I don't think so.

    When you partition a drive all data will be lost whether you erase it or not

  • Problem creating Mtn Lion Recovery partition on external drive.

    USB external.  Newly erased, three partitions: one 2GB for Recovery HD, other two backups of my old SL machine and new ML machine (Mini). Those work and their respective machines fine.  Drive seems OK.
        Used Recovery Disk Asst v. 1.0 to create Recovery HD on the small partition while booted into 10.8.2 (the brand new Mini).  Factory installed Mtn Lion Recovery HD exists on internal drive and it works— when starting with command-R or command-shift-R, not with Option key.     Install of Recovery HD to external seemed to go fine and doing a "diskutil list" in Terminal showed both the internal and external Recovery HD's, properly named as such.   However, when restarted with Option down the recovery partition showed up named the same as my internal— at that point "Macintosh HD" but later when I changed the internal's name, reinstalled the Recovery HD, and restarted with Option key the recovery partition now was named the same as new internal drive name.   Both times choosing the recovery partition resulted in booting into internal drive.   
    Was wondering if anyone had a similar problem— and found solution/reason.   Apple Tech Support particularly not helpful/knowledgeable on this subject. 

    Hi Baltwo
       Really appreciate the help.   Many thanks.     Finally seems to be working.     Not sure exactly what worked but in case you're interested I'll give you a, hopefully, short summary:
    Using DU (after copy/paste of the command you wrote above into Terminal) I cloned the working internal drives RDH to the partition for it on the ext.   Failed— still seemed to work as almost an alias pointing at the boot volume on the internal.
    So, erased the external again; didn't partition, did a reinstall of ML from DU while booted into RDH of internal.  Then started from that new ML partition on external and let Setup Asst migrate everything over from the internal to keep Users/Permissions from being a problem.
        When that finished I tried to restart w option key.   Got a recovery HD that was called exactly that but, again, booted into internal boot drive.   Booted into internals RHD just to make sure it was OK and it was.
       For whatever reason again restarted w option key.   This time I got four choices:  the boot volume of internal and external, an ext volume called Recovery HD (the trickster), and another volume called Recovery 10.8.3.   Something new— and, as Bill Murray said in Ground Hog Day, "anything new is good."   So I tried booting into that new RHD 10.8.3.  (Note, I'm still running 10.8.2 on boot volumes.)
      And that worked— booted into Recovery HD but no way that I could figure to see for sure that it was the Recovery HD on ext vs. on internal.   I think I need to activate the Debug menu on the RHD DU so I can choose the 10.8.3 recovery and see if I have the option of Repairing the disk or it's greyed out.  If greyed, then proves I'm booted into it.   Might be a more elegant way to see that but it's the one I know.    Still, I assume I was in the RHD on the external.
      Then made a second partition for the old mac's backup and that initially resulted in the boot volume of the internal backup not be mountable but after a restart or two testing the two RHD's, the mini decided to see all the volumes and things are, for the moment, copacetic.  
      Hope that wasn't too long and boring.    From my experience and reading on the 'net, my general sense is that there are a bunch of variables that all have to be right for this process to work.  Probably less is more and just installing ML on a disk by itself will be the most reliable method, if most wasteful of data storage. 
    Regardless, couldn't have done it without you, baltwo.   I don't use this forum enough to know what the etiquette and protocols are but I marked all of your posts as useful, which they were, and, finally, as solving my issue, which they did. 
    Thanks again

  • How to best partition an external drive for my purposes?

    Hello, please help,
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire) portable external harddrive for backing up my data prior to iMac repair.
    I also plan to totally wipe my PPC iMac and reinstall it with Leopard.
    I erased the external HD, zeroing out the data from it's previous owner, and reformatted it as Mac OS Extended (not journaled).
    Now I realise that it might be even more useful than I'd imagined.
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    I've heard I should format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HFS+, what ever that is
    I'm currently running OS 10.4.11 but plan to buy Leopard and install that after the wipe.

    17" 1.9Ghz iMac G5 (iSight)
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire)
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    For what you want to do, there is a mismatch between your PPC computer and the external drive that you bought.
    With a few exceptions, a PPC Mac requires a firewire external drive for booting and will not boot from a USB drive, regardless of which OS is installed and regardless of the partition scheme and volume format on the drive. I also have an iMac G5, and mine will not boot from USB.
    If you do exchange your drive for a firewire drive, do not get another Western Digital model to use with your G5 - many external WD firewire drives will not boot a PPC mac. See [this page|http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787]
    If you want to keep your present USB drive, you can still partition it with one partition for a backup clone and another for "other stuff". With respect to immediate use for recovering your stuff after a clean Leopard install on the HD, I think that Migration Assistant will still work, though I haven't tried this. As for the future, the problems with a clone not being bootable are 1) You can't test it to see if it works OK, and 2) If you do need to restore from it you'd need to boot from "somewhere else" - I think you could boot from an install disk and use Disk Utility's Restore feature to clone it back.
    With regard to PC access, a PPC mac normally requires an Apple Partition Map partition scheme on the drive for booting, and such a scheme does not allow for the FAT32 volume format that is readable by PCs. However in this case since your PPC mac can't boot from it anyway, you could partition the drive as GUID. This would allow the main volume to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the nonbootable clone, and would allow the extra volume to be formatted as FAT32. If you eventually got an Intel Mac, a clone from it to the main volume would also then be bootable.
    But what I would do, if feasible, is exchange the USB drive and get a non-WD firewire drive instead.
    Message was edited by: jsd2

  • Problem with 2 External Drives on my new iMac

    I am having a problem when I daisy-chain a second external HD to my first external HD connected to my new iMac. This is the second external HD I've tried this with, with similar problems arising.
    My setup: OS 10.5.6. First external HD: G-Tech Q 1TB; 2nd External HD: also a G-Tech Q 1TB (the first time I was daisy-chaining a LaCie 250GB drive to my first external drive).
    Problem: when my second external HD is daisy-chained to the first external HD my system starts to go wonky. I can't force quit apps for one. My system hangs. On reboot I don't get past the blue screen. If I remove the daisy-chain all is fine.
    I initially had this problem with another external HD I tried to daisy-chain to the first. Same issue.
    I was trying to partition the second external using Disk Utility. When I hit the Partition button, Disk Utility just hung with the beach ball.
    When I attached a second external the first time I tried to do this all sorts of havoc ensued. A lot of apps were hanging and I couldn't Force Quit them. The whole system seemed to go wonky.
    Can anyone tell me what might be happening here?

    I've been doing a bit of research on these boards about daisy-chaining problems and am reading that sometimes daisy-chaining can overwhelm the Firewire bus and even corrupt data. This is what I had experienced the first time I tried to daisy-chain. Someone recommended a powered Firewire repeater (like this: http://tinyurl.com/kl84n5) would be a better solution.
    Given I've got only 1 Firewire port on my iMac, what do you think?

  • Input / Output Error when creating GUID Partition on External Drives

    I've been trying to setup an install of OS X on an external device and therefore need to partition them to the GUID Partition Scheme.
    I've tried it with my iPod and an External Hard Disk Drive and no matter what I do, I get the error:
    Exited with Error: Input / Output Error
    Thats all I get. I can partition them with either of the other two choices, but of course those wont let me boot an Intel Based Mac.
    The External HDD is USB 2.0, the iPod I've tried both USB and Firewire, and have not had any luck. I know it can be done, but am not sure why I'm having this problem.
    Any suggestions?

    I'm having the same problem. Trying to format an external drive with the GUID scheme fails.
    # diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ Test GPTFormat /dev/disk1
    Started erase on disk disk1
    Creating Partition Map
    error writing partition map: Invalid argument (22)
    Partitioning encountered error Invalid argument (22) on disk disk1
    I've tried this on my Intel MacBook and on my PPC Mac Mini. Tried using a generic USB2 flash disk and also an iPod shuffle. Always the same error.
    Is GUID broken on external drives?

  • Problems with two external drives

    I apologise for posting this again but this question was posted on the day the support site was being worked on, so just in case it was missed by most I am posting it again. I have since heard of at least 3 people who have problems when using more than one external drive.
    I have 2 external drives, a Lacie 300gig, and a Western Digital (in a Smart-drive case) 500gig.
    Both are partitioned, one volume for Time Machine, one volume for a bootable clone (done with Super Duper), the other 2 for various stuff.
    Both drives have extra firewire ports. Whenever I link them together via one or the others firewire ports, I have all sorts of problems, ie. moving data, TM prepares for long periods and will cause the machine not to shutdown or restart, system freeze, Imac sometimes won't start up properly with both connected (blue screen) ect.
    When either drive is plugged directly into the Imac by itself everything is fine.
    I would like both drives always connected.
    Should I use a Firewire hub instead of the HD ports?
    Am I doing something wrong?
    I have replaced leads and run disk utility on both disks, both appear fine.

    The Lacie drive has two extra firewire ports(I have tried both ports), the WD drive has a pass through port. I have tried reversing the drives with the same result.
    Sorry but I don't understand what you mean by full size drives? And how do I configure one or both to be the master?

  • Partitioning bootable external drive.

    I just ordered a 2 TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 Desktop RAID setup from Other World Computing (https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T2.0S/) and would like to create a partition for Snow Leopard on this external drive. I plan to use the drive in a RAID-5 configuration, primarily to serve files for video and audio. The Snow Leopard partition that I would like to put on this drive is mainly to use for testing and troubleshooting my iMacs and Macbook Pro, and for a bootable drive in the event of a drive failure on one of my Macs. Can anyone tell me how large the partition should be and the best way to set this up? Thanks

    mstrammd wrote:
    I am already using a Time Capsule for backups. I have over a year's worth of backups on the TC. Yes, I could clone the internal HD, but it is 750 GB and >would require the purchase of another drive.
    I see. The size of a clone is related to the space used on the drive rather than the drive size.
    Besides, current iMac is going to be replaced by one of the new i7 Quad core machines with a 2 TB HD. I am buying the RAID solution to have redundancy of important files and primarily HD video, audio, and RAW image files. What is the >advantage of cloning when I'm already using the Time Machine/Time capsule.
    You might as well wait until you get the new machine. Personally, I don't trust TM very much. There are a variety of cases where it fails to do the desired job. A clone is much less likely to be a problem.
    I suppose clone would allow a rapid rebuild of the internal drive, but only as a snapshot of a given period of time when it was made. I read some recent reports of some Time Capsules dying after 16-18 months, which is really disconcerting. Apparently there are some bad power supplies out there on some units. That is >what got me thinking about additional ways to protect my data.
    I like TM because it provides the opportunity to restore to different dates, but, as indicated, I am not impressed with its reliability. A clone, on the other hand, is, IMO, very reliable. And, using, for example, SuperDuper one can make incremental clones (which really shortens the time required for subsequent cloinings) and schedule clonings. The best procedure, I think, is to use both TM and clones (ignoring also having an off-site backup). I use both, but they are on different drives. So, you may want to get that additional drive.

  • Merge Partitions in External Drive, Retain Time Machine Data

    Hi there,
    I've read loads of posts and can't find the solution to my problem (hoping there is one!).
    I currently have an external drive with three partitions: One running time machine and two others that are now empty.
    I'm trying to merge these partitions while retaining the data in time machine but when trying to do this in disk utility, all the options are greyed out (I can get to the partition tab and the three partitions are visible but the +/- signs are greyed out along with 'options' and the size field too. On both, it says "this volume will not be erased".
    The two empty partitions are formatted as 'MAC OS Extended'. The Time Machine drive is 'MAC OS Extended (journaled).
    The Time Machine partition is the top partition so this isn't the problem.
    Any ideas? Any help will be much appreciated!
    Thanks

    It does begin to look like it. I don't do Windoze, and there's nothing in Disk Utility's help, but I don't think you can alter partitions on MBR via your Mac.
    Also, Time Machine often doesn't work well on MBR.
    If you're planning to use either of the empty partitions for a "bootable clone," MBR won't work for that, either. Post back for details if that's what you want to do (although it's safer to use a separate drive for that).
    You can copy your TM backups elsewhere if necessary, but it will of course take a lot of space and time. Use the Restore tab of Disk Utility, and/or see #18 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

  • Problem booting from external drive

    I'm having trouble booting my MacBook from an external USB drive.
    I've created a bootable backup of my hard drive, using SuperDuper! (in order to be able to install a bigger hard drive and restore my current drive state). If, with the drive attached, I restart and hold down Alt (which I understand should offer a choice of drives from which to boot), I get nothing but grey screen (ie. the first grey you see before the apple logo comes up right at the start of startup). I have been able to boot from the external drive by changing Startup Disk settings, so I'm sure there's no problem with the external disk volume.
    The drive is an Iomega 80GB USB 2.0 drive, and I'm running 10.4.10 on a 2GHz Core Duo MacBook.

    Hey guys,
    Thanks for the feedback... here's my update (still no joy):
    • I'm not sure about the GUID table - how do I check? Does the fact that I can boot from the drive having selected it in my System Preferences mean that it is? It is definitely HFS+ formatted, however. (I gave bad information about the drive type, however - it's a Freecom 400GB, not Iomega 80GB, not that I suppose that makes a difference.)
    • After holding that Alt key for a very long time, my MacBook did show me something other than a plain grey screen: a single, large, internal HD icon in the middle of the screen, above a vertical arrow icon. I take this to mean that the MacBook is recognising the internal HDD and no other volume. The external drive was still plugged into the USB port.
    • The external drive is in fact partitioned as two volumes.

Maybe you are looking for