Reformatting external drive to Mac OS Extended but maintaining RAID setup

Hi again,
I am considering taking the leap finance-wise and purchasing [this external drive|http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WDH2Q20000N-Studio-Interface/dp/B00 16P7H3Q/ref=cmcr_pr_producttop]. It comes pre-formatted to HFS+ or something, so I guess I will need to reformat it to Mac OS Extended to use it with FCE.
So here are the questions:
*1. Would it make more sense to use it in RAID 0 mode for faster speed, or RAID 1 mode to keep a safer backup of my files?*
*2. Would reformatting it to Mac OS Extended for use with FCE still allow it to use normal RAID abilities?*
I realize this is not the right forum for posting this, but I thought someone here might be knowledgable about backup in general and how to best format an external drive for use with FCE, while maintaining the ability to have a "mirrored" RAID setup. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance,
Sasha
Message was edited by: skalicki`

So just one more question because I'm pretty new to this whole RAID thing:
Say I formatted the drive to RAID 1 so in theory I have 1TB of space that is "mirrored" over to the other external drive.
*When I ingest my footage, will copies be stored to both drives, so if one fails, I will still have my media?*
I gathered this was the idea but didn't know how it works with FCE.

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Unable to format external drive as Mac OS Extended

I just bought a WD 3TB My Book Essential external hard drive so I can free-up space on my Mac Mini. When I used Disk Utility to erase the data and reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended, I got the following error:
+Disk Insertion+
+The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer+
There were three options; Initialize, Ignore or Eject. Choosing either Initialize or Ignore resulted in the following error:
+Disk Utility Internal Error+
+Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility+
So I Googled it and found the following thread http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11461203
This suggested using First Aid; Repair Disk. When I ran this, I got the following error:
+First Aid failed+
+Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk4s1” because the following error was encountered:+
+Filesystem verify or repair failed+
I'm stuck; does anyone have any ideas how to resolve this?!

Not sure what the problem was on the MacMini (10.5.8), but I just managed to format the disk on my MacBook Pro (10.6.4).
Problem solved!

Formatted External drive for Mac OS extended

Hi,
I actually change from windows to Mac (no comparison...!!) but trying to transfer my photos (Pictures in finder) to an external hard disk i can`t drag and drop and i do not know why....i read in one forume that i have to formatted the external drive for Mac OS extended. First question: how could i do that? if my hard disk was originally formatted for windows, do i lose the info when i formatted?
Thanks!!

You will lose the files on the HD when you reformat it. So copy what you want off the drive to a folder on your Mac temporarily.
select the HD on the Desktop and launch Disk Utility.
select the HD in the left hand page of DU.
click on the Partiton button
select 1 Partition
select OS X Extended (journaled) in the drop down Format menu.
click on the Apply button
drag the folder of files onto the EHD to copy back and then delete from your Mac's drive after verifying that they all copied back successfully.
OT

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.

Reformat external drive from mac os to windows

the windows partition on my mac book pro is close to full.
i would like to use an external drive formatted for windows for my growing number of pc games (gw,tdu,fsx,dirt - which run great on the mac book pro windows partition btw).
i tried to reformat a mac formatted external drive using disc utility, erase, format volume, but only choices were mac os extended and unix - no fat32, dos, or windows choices.
if i start up my mac book pro using windows, the drive does not show up in the 'hard drives' section of 'my computer'
please let me know how to reformat this mac formatted external drive so i can use it when the mac book pro is running windows.
thanks

Hi Stefan, Turns out my old ext hd was corrupt. Bought a new 300G G-Drive and got a brand new problem which you may have heard of - the dreaded hal.dll crash. My windows partition crashed and after much effort I finally have everything working.
Had to go to the mac store to get a boot camp 1.4 disk (mine was the original) was able to save files from the corrupt windows partition to my mac partition. next i used boot camp to revert to a single partition on my internal drive, saving my mac system and files. next used boot camp to partition the internal drive into big mac and 31G windows. reinstalled windows. next using disk utility i split my 300G external into 10 30G partitions using your GUID suggestion and formatting in ms-dos(fat32) so my mac could read/write to it. dragged the files i saved to the 30G partitions and they work fine. loaded more games into the 30G partitions and they also are working fine.
could not have done it without your pointing out the GUID option.
vielen dank, john

How to format external drive to MAC OS Extended w/ MBR scheme?

Hello all,
I have a Maxtor 1TB drive that I would like to format to MAC OS Extended (Journaled) but also using a Master Boot Record partition map scheme.
Every time I try using the Disk Utility, I get a partition error. It will only let me partition using a GUID scheme, however the XBox360 that I also connect my drive to requires a MBR scheme.
I have another another Maxtor drive formatted in this manor, so I can't quite understand why I keep receiving this error!
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Message was edited by: Gio_vanni

Not doable. AFAIK, your choices are APM, GPT, and MBR. Additionally, HFS+ isn't available for windoze's MBR; only MS-DOS or FAT-32.

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!

I had formatted external HDD as Mac OS Extended(journaled) earlier, but now i want to format the same as ExFAT so that i can copy files between PC and MAC. But it is giving 'Can't unmount' error while i try to run Erase

I had formatted external HDD as Mac OS Extended(journaled) earlier, but now i want to format the same as ExFAT so that i can copy files between PC and MAC. But it is giving 'Can't unmount' error while i try to run Erase

Use the PC to reformat the drive.

Moving iPhoto to external drive; have formatted external disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), moved the iPhoto library to external drive; when trying to change the library, the iPhoto file on new external is greyed out can't be selected.What went wrong?

Must have done something wrong..
1. formatted external disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - required a partition, but that went fine. Entire new external disk was included in the partition formatted to Mac OS Extneded (journaled).
2. moved iPhoto library to new external disk
3. Holding Option key down, opened iPhoto
4. Choose library feature appeared, however when new library function option appeared and "choose library" selected, the iPhoto folder appearing in the new external drive was greyed out and not able to be selected. Therefore the default library remains the original iphoto library on the Mac.
I've moved the original iphoto library to the trash and then tried to start iPhoto. A message comes up that the iPhoto is in the trash and needs to be pulled out before iPhoto can start (clearly the new iphoto library on the external drive is not being seen.
Can anyone suggest where I went awry? Thanks!

Try trash the com.apple.iPhoto.plist file from the HD/Users/ Your Name / library / preferences folder.
(On 10.7 or later: Hold the option (or alt) key while clicking on the Go menu in Finder to access the User Library)
(Remember you'll need to reset your User options afterwards. These include minor settings like the window colour and so on. Note: If you've moved your library you'll need to point iPhoto at it again.)
What's the plist file?
For new users: Every application on your Mac has an accompanying plist file. It records certain User choices. For instance, in your favourite Word Processor it remembers your choice of Default Font, on your Web Browser is remembers things like your choice of Home Page. It even recalls what windows you had open last if your app allows you to pick up from where you left off last. The iPhoto plist file remembers things like the location of the Library, your choice of background colour, whether you are running a Referenced or Managed Library, what preferences you have for autosplitting events and so on. Trashing the plist file forces the app to generate a new one on the next launch, and this restores things to the Factory Defaults. Hence, if you've changed any of these things you'll need to reset them. If you haven't, then no bother. Trashing the plist file is Mac troubleshooting 101.
Then try select it again.

How to format FAT drive as MAC OS EXTENDED?

Hello,
Does anybody can help me to format a FAT drive as MAC OS EXTENDED? It is an external FW drive. I cannot find the way in the laptop.
Thanks!!

I've discovered one subtlety with Disk Utility that wasn't at all apparent until I smashed into it headlong. I have a number of machines that have been running Tiger Server since the day it came out, incrementally updating from 10.4 to 10.4.11 as each release came out- so I have a number of 10.4 install disks to support them. I have also been painstakingly backing them up weekly via SuperDooper to emergency firewire backup drives, so that when disasters would occur I could theoretically simply reboot from the external drive and keep going.
At some point, Apple changed both Disk Utility and the requirements for a bootable external disk, and apparently I didn't get the memo. The old Disk Utility present on the original 10.4 disks lacks the "Options" feature found on the current one under the Partion tab- which allows the user to select the partition table format. There are now three options: Master Boot Record (FAT/DOS), GUID Partition Table (used to support the Intel OS X machines), and Apple Partition Map for the PPC machines.
Regrettably, PowerPC machines running 10.4.11 apparently *will not boot* from disks reformatted from DOS/FAT as Mac OS X Extended with the old disk utility, as I found to my woe when I installed Security Update 2008-008 and all my Server machines stopped working. They appear on the list of bootable drives when booting in select mode, they appear in the list for selecting the boot disk in System Utility, they can be selected- but the machine will simply not boot from them. The old utility apparently used to leave the FAT/DOS Master Boot Record partition table in place when reformatting to Mac OS Extended. I discovered that it was necessary to use the new utility, and specifically go into the options and select "Apple Partition Table", if you intend to be able to boot from an external drive reformatted from FAT/DOS with 10.4.11-era machines. And it should be noted that the new disk utility *does not* do this table selection by default: you have to use the Options button under the Partition tab and set it appropriately yourself.
Consequently, I spent several days reformatting, repartitioning, changing partion table types, and recloning my backup drives so as to render them bootable once again under this apparently new scheme. So, as a word to the wary: if you have been maintaining bootable external drives since the early (perhaps pre-10.4.7) releases of Tiger, it would behoove you to take a few minutes to go make sure that they are actually *still bootable*- and correct this gotcha before you run into it in an hour of need.
The other bad news if that, if you have the original 10.4 Server disks, "Archive and Install" does not appear to be an option, and you only have a disk utility that can't produce a bootable external disk in any case when booting from them. So it can be a painful exposure.

HT201250 how do I disable time machine? I want to use my external drive as additional storage. But it mirrors everything I edit. If I remove a document, it removes it from the external drive as well.

how do I disable time machine? I want to use my external drive as additional storage. But it mirrors everything I edit. If I remove a document, it removes it from the external drive as well.
I purchased a 1 TB WD passport drive, formatted for Mac. I set it up originally (mistakenly) to backup time machine. I went back and set it to "do not backup" It still backs up evey document I edit. If I add a document when the drive is disconnected, it automatically adds it to the external drive the next time connect to the passport drive. If I remove a document the same thing happens.
I need additional storage to free up space on my laptop hard drive. This is not working the way I want it to. Help!

Do not backup your startup volume to another partition on the same drive. If the drive fails you have nothing. Always backup to another drive or volume on another drive.
The I/O error usually means there's a problem with the drive. Clone ASAP, then repartition and reformat the main drive. Then restore the clone. Here's the basic process:
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive.
Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the external one.
Boot from the external hard drive.
Erase the internal hard drive.
Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Do not quit Disk Utility.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.

HELP!!! i formated a external hdd to MAC os Extended file system

HELP!!! i formated a external hdd to MAC os Extended file system in disk utility and now i need it formated back to work on pc. i have tried ms-dos file system under the erase tab and it doesnt work, on my pc all it has under my computer is black, but if you go down by the time you can "safely remove hardware" but it dosent give a drive location (ex: e:/)....
the external hdd is a seagate go 250gb usb

Use the PC to reformat the drive.

How can I migrate an Aperture library from an external HDD with Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format?

How can I migrate an Aperture library from an external HDD with Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format?
I used to store my pictures on an external hard drive using the latest version of Aperture. Now I tried migrating my Aperture library to Photos. However, after a short moment an error message popped up telling me that "Photos was unable to make a copy of your library before preparing it. Photos does not have the necessary permissions...".
My external HDD doesn't need any permission repairs nor is the system prohibited to read from or write to it.
Thanks for any advice in advance!
Gohtac

My guess is that the encryption is the problem for the new app.

HT4407 Hey, I am unable to install windows 7 using 'bootcamp 5.0' . I have already partitioned the drive as (mac Os Extended Journaled) and yet it seems bootcamp won't acknowledge this?

Hey, I am unable to install windows 7 using 'bootcamp 5.0' . I have already partitioned the drive as (mac Os Extended Journaled) and yet it seems bootcamp won't acknowledge this?
My first thoughts were that 'bootcamp' was out of date...needed an upgrade to register windows 7. Since then I am once again met with the same problem... how can it not see the I have already have a paritioned drived ready to be used for installition, is there a way to fix this problem? I don't really want to pay out for 'i-parition' only to merge my 2 drives back into one and start again from scratch =/. Seems silly to do so...what are my options?
Regards Swishi...p.s If anyone can help me...it'll make my day :3.

ONE PARTITION.
You don't need to buy anything but you should have backups.
you can delete #2 you created. Then resize to full drive.
There are already
GPT
EFI
Mac
Recovery
and there needs to be Windows which cannot be higher ID
Reading the instructions first and just swallow whatever pride or inidignation. It is a "my way or highwar" setup and utility,.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.7.pdf
create a Windows support software (drivers) CD or USB storage media
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4407
The Boot Camp Assistant can burn Boot Camp software (drivers) to a DVD or copy it to a USB storage device, such as a flash drive or hard drive. These are the only media you can use to install Boot Camp software.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4569
Installation Guide Instructions for all features and settings.
Boot Camp 4.0 FAQ Get answers to commonly asked Boot Camp questions.
Windows 7 FAQ Answers to commonly asked Windows 7 questions.
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Formatting an External HD as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I am having a challenge formatting my external hard drive in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. From reading the forums I found out that I can not copy my iMovie events to the external HD unless it is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I have a Sans Digital Towerstor external HD enclosure with 2 Seagate 1.5TB hard drives in it. I have been using this setup formatted as FAT with no issues. That is until I started running out of HD space on my 24" iMac. After trying unsuccessfully yo copy my iMovie events to the external HD I found out that it was formatted incorrectly. I have since made copies of all my information and set the external hard drives to a Raid 0 configuration so I can format both drives.
I tried many times to format my external HD's in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with no success. I kept receiving the error "Partition failed with the error: File system formatter failed." I read some additional articles that suggested I try the Partition tab as opposed to the Erase tab in the Disk Utility. I was able to successfully format the drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Since this external drive is meant as a redundant backup I changed the Sans Digital Towerstor to a Raid 1 configuration so there is a mirror image of one of the drives. It would not recognize the drive after I set it back to Raid 1 so I tried to repartition the main drive again using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I received the same error as I did before..."Partition failed with the error: File system formatter failed."
I need to have the drives in the Towerstor as a mirror backup of each other as I have a lot of important information. Any adivec you can give on how to partition these drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in a Raid 1 configuration would be most appreciated.
Thank you for you time and input.

Thank you for your response. I was able to successfully format the drives Extended journaled when they were out of the raid configuration. I was not able to format as Extended (not journaled) in the Raid configuration.

Reformatting external drive to Mac OS Extended but maintaining RAID setup

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