Reformat using external HD

What are the steps for reformating using a external HD? I have the iso on the external already. The mac wont start up completely, it freezes at a grey screen but i can get to the terminal. I dont know the exact os i am running at the moment but i know its over 10.4 and im trying to reformat with snow leopard 10.6. Also dvd drive doesnt work. I dont know to much about macs, so please try to explain steps well please. Thanks for the help.

1. You can't boot a disc image directly - it has to be mounted on a booted drive, which makes it pointless for the job you're trying to do.
2. If the 10.6 you're trying to use is from another Mac's system discs, it's unlikely to boot the MB. You'll need a system installed from a retail Snow Leopard Disc on the external HD
What you need is a bootable OS on the external disc, from which to boot the MB and run Disk Utility to Repair Disk.
Then you can clone the OS to the MB either with the Restore facility in Disk Utility or a third party app like CarbonCopyCloner.
Before you go back to the donor Mac to install a full OS on the external, If you can get to terminal, boot in single-user mode by holding down ⌘S on start up, then try running this from the command prompt -
fsck -fy (fsck, space, hyphen, fy) and hit return. That does pretty much what DU does when you select Repair Disc.
If it says repairs were carried out, repeat the command until you get a clean pass ("the volume Macintosh HD seems to be OK").
Then type
reboot and press return.
If all's now well, it should boot normally into OS X

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Greeting, I want to reformat my external hard drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted ) but before formatting it, I want to make sure that if I loose the hard drive or the hard drive get stolen, no one will be able to retrieve or recover the in

Greeting,
I want to reformat my external hard drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted ) but before formatting it, I want to make sure that if I loose the hard drive or the hard drive get stolen, no one will be able to retrieve or recover the information on it so could you tell me what kind of encryption will be used or is there any way to recover the information?
Thanks!

I think FileVault is used to encryp internal hard drive but I wanna encrypt an external hard drive with Mac OS Extended Journaled Encrypted which is completely different!

HT3764 How to reformat an external hard drive using Snow Lepard to use for Time Machine

How to reformat an external hard drive using Snow Lepard to use for Time Machine

Use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to erase it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID as the partition map format(or APM if you're using a PowerPC Mac running 10.5).
(73291)

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

Using external hard drive with both iMac and PC

I own an old Dell PC and an iBook, and will soon replace the Dell with an iMac.
I recently bought a 250GB Western Digital external hard drive to back up my data. I would like to use this hard drive to back up all of the files that are on the PC (which I will soon be getting rid of) and also use it for backing up the files on the iBook and, when it arrives, the iMac. In other words, neatly back up all my info onto the back-up drive.
My question is this: can I do this? If not, what is the best way to consolidate all of the data from all of these computers into one place? Will the fact that some data comes from a PC and some from a Mac be a problem? Can you move back-up drives fromone computer to another? The photos on my PC are saved in Picasa, whereas the photos on the iBook are in iTunes. My iPod music files are all on the PC in iTunes.
Any advice about backing all this stuff up in a user friendly way would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I have heard that there are ways to reformat external drives, to partition them, and to "raid" them. Can someone explain what this all means?
Thanks.
iBook G4

Hello,
Your best option would be to store the files from your PC on the drive with the drive in the FAT32 format. Then, copy the files to your Mac's Internal hard drive.
Now, once the files are stored safely on your Mac's internal hard drive, you can safely reformat the external drive as a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) drive. That will be the best format to use for long-term purposes with your Mac.
Many OS X file types (such as many PKG files) cannot be stored / written to a FAT32 volume. So, a FAT32 drive would not be suitable for backing-up an entire OS X hard drive (or even many of the system updates that you might download).
So, that's how I'd do it. Use the drive as a FAT32 just long enough to get the files moved to your Mac.
Once the drive is re-formatted in the Native Mac format, then you could copy the files back to it, and any other Mac files that you wanted to back-up to it for safe-keeping.
Personally, I would re-partition it in at least two pieces on the Mac. One to hold data / personal files for safe-keeping, and a second bootable partition for a full system / OS X backup.
You can read a bit more about this in some of my previous discussions here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2536703&#2536703
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2597825&#2597825
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2632566&#2632566
Read through each of those three discussions and you'll see how they all come together and provide you with a good solution for backing-up your hard drive.
I hope you don't mind my linking you to those other discussions, but it just seemed more practical than re-typing what I had already said all over again
Also, if you are getting one of the new Intel iMac systems, and you want to be able to create a bootable backup as described in those posts, be sure to format your external hard drive using the new GUID format. That will provide you with the best solution.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

Time Machine requires me to reformat my external hard disk

I have a Maxtor 1TB external hard disk that works fine with my Mac. It has been formatted to FAT32 format so I can use it on Mac and PC. When I tried to setup Time Machine to back up to this drive, I was told I needed to reformat my external hard disk as the format was not recognised. Do I have to get a separate external hard disk to use with Time Machine? Why the discrepancy in formats? If I get another external hard disk and reformat it according to the requirement by Time Machine, will that mean that I cannot use that hard disk with a PC? What is the required format recognised by Time Machine anyway.
Thanks for your answers.

If I get another external hard disk and reformat it according to the requirement by Time Machine, will that mean that I cannot use that hard disk with a PC?
Yes, unless the PC has software such as MacDrive installed.
What is the required format recognised by Time Machine anyway.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Time Machine has usage requirements beyond Mac OS X's general ones.
(52969)

How do I reformat my External Hard Drive (Seagate Backup Plus).

Hello everyone. How do I reformat my External Hard Drive (Seagate Backup Plus Portable Device). I accidentally clicked to use it with Time Machine and my hard drive is of little use now. When I open my hard drive, it just shows 'backup', the same thing when I open it with Windows. Thinking of reformatting it back to be used to Mac and Windows. And not use it again with Time Machine. New to Apple, appreciate the help

Hello,
"Thinking of reformatting it back to be used to Mac and Windows. And not use it again with Time Machine"
If you want to format the External drive as universally compatible, your best bet is to format it as exFAT. Note that reformatting the drive erases all contents of the drive.
1) Open Disk Utility located in /Applications/Utilities/ (or simply type it in spotlight and the application will show up)
2) Select the external Hard drive
3) Click the 'erase' tab.
4) Under format: select exFAT
5) Click "Erase" in the lower right hand corner to reformat the drive.

Must I reformat an external hard drive?

Hello,
I purchased a new MacBook Pro w/ Retina and wanted to install bootcamp. On previous computers, I have been able to simply partition the internal hard drive and install windows on one half. Is there any way I could do that with Bootcamp 5.1 or must I reformat an external disk? If it helps, I have a downloaded copy of windows.
Ben

Windows cannot be installed on an external disk, unless you use Windows-to-Go (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/products-and-technologies/devi ces/windowstogo.aspx).

Help on reformatting an external HD

I currently have an external Hard Drive (Mybook 500GB) and I cannot figure out for the life of me how to reformat it so that I can use it for Time Machine. Please if someone could give me a quick step by step on how to reformat an external I would be at your mercy. This has taken up to much of my day for me to worry about it anymore and i figured i would ask the experts (every other mac user but me lately...)
Thanks A LOT
J C M

Go into System Preferences > Time Machine and make sure that the large white button is in the On position. Connect your drive and Time Machine will ask you to format your drive. Allow Time Machine to do so.
Many people have found that it takes a bit of a partition two-step to get a drive formatted correctly if you prefer to do it yourself rather than allow Time Machine to automatically do the formatting. There are good directions here. However, people with PPC Macs should substitute Apple Partition Map for GUID.

Windows 7 wants to reformat my external drive?

I have a Western Digital external USB hard drive that i have been using with a Dell XPS Laptop. i plugged it in yesterday and Win 7 keeps asking if i want to reformat my external drive. trying to figure out why?? any help would be appreciated.

Hi,
This issue can be caused by a corrupt file system. However, there are still data for you stored in this disk. Please attempt to fix the errors on this disk.
select the corrupt disk, right click and select Properties. Head for the "Tools" tab and select "Check this drive for errors".
Or you can use the Check Disk tool to check the integrity of disks.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee872425.aspx
Note to reduce the lost resulting from such issue, i recommend you to backup thoes data frequently.
Thanks!
Andy Altmann
TechNet Community Support

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errollflynn2000 wrote:
I was told that I could reformat a external so that my Mac could read both Mac and Windows info.
Aside of using crappy FAT32 with its 4GB limitation or the not really better ExFAT, there are two alternative ways:
Enable your Mac to "understand" Windows NTFS.
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It's your story - time to switch on the innovation.||About me||LightSwitch blog

After upgrading to Lion, the Finder will increase the virtual memory while using external HD

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Reformat using external HD

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