Time taken to format external hard disk

I have just purchased a 1T external hard drive and now using the erase disk to reformat from FAT-32 to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I let this run over night (8 hours), however in the morning it still had not finished. As I thought it may have frozen I went to Finder & force quit the disk utility function. I have now started again after reading other posts, but I' can't seem to find anyway giving me an indication of how long this should take. Any suggestions??
Also, I have not used any of the security options.

Normally a reformat to Mac format takes about a minute, maybe less. Do you have one of the options turned on to "zero all data" or one of the other heavy duty "kill all data" check boxes selected when formatting?
Patrick

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NTFS formatted external hard disks?

does mountain lion supports writing on NTFS formatted external hard disks?

I'm getting immense slow-downs using Tuxera NTFS (latest release as of August 2012). I moved my home folder to an NTFS shared drive. Reading/writing to the cache while browsing in Safari is slow. Takes about 30 seconds for Finder to open my NTFS drive, takes about 1 minute to open an app and close the app. If I disable Tuxera NTFS and make my drive read-only, everything goes back to snappy performance (except for write-errors, since disabling Tuxera means I can't write to my home folder).
What shocks me the most is that if you visit the Tuxera community forum on their corporate website, none of their support representatives have helped their customers since the release of Tuxera NTFS for OS X Mountain Lion. It's as if the company realized they messed up, so they went silent.
I'm about to try the latest version of Paragon. I had it for OS X Lion, but it corrupted my entire drive after 2 months of use, which is why I tried to give Tuxera a shot. Here's to hoping Paragon has fixed their issues.

Time Machine not recognizing external hard disk

I am trying to set up backups via Time Machine on my external hard drive but as I go through the process the my hard drive is not recognized in the dropdown menu. It the external hard drive is recognized in the Finder but not by Time Machine. What gives?

do you know how the disk is formatted? it may be in a format that time machine does not support, but which the finder can see. just like this guy:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1241053&tstart=0
(solution included in that thread as well).

Can't write to a Windows formatted external hard disk

I moved the Windows XP formatted external hard disc from the Windows machine to the Imac. I can read files on the hard disc, can write from the external to the Mac, and can work with the files once they are on the Mac. But I cannot write to the external. I lack permission, the error message says.
I talked with Apple via my AppleCare arrangement. They tell me I will have to reformat the disc for the Mac before I can write to it.
The problem with the recommendation is that that disc, 160 gb, is over three-quarters filled with backup files for the home network. I can't afford to lose them.
The puzzle is that the network sharing is uneven. So I'm led to think there is some problem with my setup. From the Mac, I can read and write to two Windows computers and the internal hard disc, the C drive, of the third. When the external hard disc was attached to that third computer, I was never able to see it from the Mac.
None of the Windows machines can see the Mac.
Any suggestions?
John
IMac Intel Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.6)

When you go over a network, the Mac doesn't have to worry about writing to the destination disk, it just sends the appropriate TCP/IP packets and lets the PC that is serving the disk worry about writing to the disk. When the disk is connected directly, then the Mac has to know all about writing to that file system.
It does seem to me that if Apple could read from the drive, they should be able to write to it, but apparently that was more complicated and they didn't implement it.
As for the windows boxen not being able to see the Mac... have you considered installing Bonjour for Windows onto the PCs? My wife has PCs and I have Macs, but we're all networked together. We were having some networking issues, trying to share printers. So I had her install Bonjour on one of her boxes. Suddenly, all our networking problems went away. She could see my printers, and all my drive shares.
So you might want to think about turning thinga around and serving off of the Mac.
Doc

Time Machine backup of external hard disk

Since it is possible to use my iTunes Library on an external hard disk I wonder if it is possible to include this iTunes Library (on an external drive) into my TimeMachine backup!

Have a read here http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/2.html
Stefan

Finder cannot searching for NTFS formatted external hard disk

MacBookAir,1.8GhZ,Memory 4GB1600 MHz DDR3
osx10.9.3
Finder can show and open the files from the external hard disk but can not searching for the files.

Barney-15E wrote:
Tuxera or paragon will give you write access, but I don't know if that will allow Spotlight to work on those drives.
A brief experiment suggests that Spotlight does not index an NTFS volume driven by Paragon NTFS. I don't have a copy of Tuxera to test.
Sorry, cchaikittiporn. Paragon does not seem to be a solution for your issue.

How can I use my time capsule as an external hard disk?

Hi ,
I hav en Airport Extreme 3 TB. I have done the setup. And it seems to working well. But I also want to use it as an external hard drive. When I go finder Shared folder I could not see Data folder in it. I have this screen. How can I see that folder.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

I count 36 characters in your TC name.. This is not good.
Please reduce the name to somewhere less than 10 characters if possible.. 20 at most.
No spaces, pure alphanumeric.
See C9 here for why the present name is bad.
http://pondini.org/TM/C9.html
Also if your wireless name is the same.. change it to short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric as well.
Then manually mount your TC disk.
In finder use top menu, Go/Connect to server.
Type in AFP://TCname.local (TCname is your new short name. Local is the default domain).
Or it can be even better to use IP if that doesn't change.. ie TC is in router mode.. and by default is 10.0.1.1 then
AFP://10.0.1.1
Then apply and you will be asked for the TC disk password.. default is public but whatever it is you set. Make sure you save it in your keychain.
The TC data share should then mount.
And small comment about using the TC for files..
TC is designed for Time Machine. It is not a NAS.. it has no backup.. it is slow to spin up and fast to spin down. Using live libraries will result in corruption and loss of your entire library in the case of iphoto.
Please be very careful. Do not jump in and think very carefully. Time Machine cannot backup any network drives including the TC. You are going to have issues with backup if the TC is only location for your files.. it is unsuitable for this. CCC can backup to another drive.. but where will that be.. USB plugged into TC you will experience new visions of pain and suffering as the backup takes almost as long as digestion by a Sarlacc.
Pondini has some pointers here.
Q3
http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Formatting external hard disks

What is the best way to reformat an external hard drive from MS-DOS to MacOS?
My disk utility software (macOS 10.5.8) refuses to delete and reformat a new toshiba hd (STOR.E ALU 2, 1 TB).

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 from the drop down menu to one. 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.

Unable to format external hard disk as mac os extended (journaled)

Have just bought a 750gb Western digital HDD. To be able to use it to store video to use in i movie it needs to be formatted in mac os extended (journal). However when I try to do this in disk utility I get a volume erase error reporting an error on exit. the resulting disk is then unreadable until it is formatted back to MS-Dos (fat) again. Any tips or have I just wasted my money on a disk that is not compatible. On the box it says it is compatible with OSX 10.2.8+?

Try the directions in this article. They are for formatting a drive for Time Machine but will work just fine for your purposes.

Format External Hard Disk

I've bought an external HDD which has not been formatted. I'd like to use it on both Windows and Mac. I know Fat32 format will do the trick but how do I format the harddisk into Fat32?

Hi Leiya Lee
Open Disk Utility,
-Select the external disk in the left panel. make sure you have selected the correct disk.
-Click the Erase tab
-Give the disk a name
-Select the Volume Format type to be FAT 32 ( in your case)
-Click Erase
regards roam

Finder freeze when opening folders of my Western Digital external hard disks

I'm facing a big issue. I'm runnin' Mac Os Lion, I realized a clean install a few days ago. Everything is going fine, but every time I plug an external hard disk on my MBP, I can see the disk appearing on my desktop or in the finder, and when I open it, the finder freezes, I have to reboot manually, or wait to relaunch the finder. My disks are in HFS format, used to work great on Snow Leopard no longer than a week ago... What is weird is that my time machine (external hard disk usb) works fine... Moreover, I can see the disks in the Disk Utility, I can't click on "verify permissions" but on "verify disk" and it says that the disks are fine... Any idea ?
PS : I could have erase everything on them and reformat, but I need the files inside...
Thanks

Hi!
Here's a suggestion from BDAqua:
In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes".
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra number on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a number, and reboot.
cornelius

How do i burn idvd projects in a dvd format to an external hard disk

I have an iDVD project but it is too big to burn to a dvd (11GB!) so I was wondering if I can save the proejct like a dvd onto my External Hard Disk. This is really urgent and important for a school project.
Thanks in advance.

iDVD does not care about file size (it compresses a movie file by about 4:1 o the standard mpeg2 format), only about length.
A standard DVD will hold up to 120 minutes of video, but this includes titles, transitions etc.
iDVD encoding settings:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/7.0/en/11417.html
Short version:
Best Performance is for videos of up to 60 minutes
Best Quality is for videos of up to 120 minutes
Professional Quality is also for up to 120 minutes but even higher quality (and takes much longer)
That was for single-layer DVDs. Double these numbers for dual-layer DVDs.
Professional Quality: The Professional Quality option uses advanced two-pass technology to encode your video (The first pass determines which parts of the movie can be given greater compresson without quality loss and which parts can’t. The second pass then encodes those different parts accordingly) , resulting in the best quality of video possible on your burned DVD. You can select this option regardless of your project’s duration (up to 2 hours of video for a single-layer disc and 4 hours for a double-layer disc). Because Professional Quality encoding is time-consuming (requiring about twice as much time to encode a project as the High Quality option, for example) choose it only if you are not concerned about the time taken.
In both cases the maximum length includes titles, transitions and effects etc. Allow about 15 minutes for these.
You can use the amount of video in your project as a rough determination of which method to choose. If your project has an hour or less of video (for a single-layer disc), choose Best Performance. If it has between 1 and 2 hours of video (for a single-layer disc), choose High Quality. If you want the best possible encoding quality for projects that are up to 2 hours (for a single-layer disc), choose Professional Quality. This option takes about twice as long as the High Quality option, so select it only if time is not an issue for you.
Use the Capacity meter in the Project Info window (choose Project > Project Info) to determine how many minutes of video your project contains.
NOTE: With the Best Performance setting, you can turn background encoding off by choosing Advanced > “Encode in Background.” The checkmark is removed to show it’s no longer selected. Turning off background encoding can help performance if your system seems sluggish.
And whilst checking these settings in iDVD Preferences, make sure that the settings for NTSC/PAL and DV/DV Widescreen are also what you want.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

Help reg what formats to be used for my new 4tb mini stack to back up my macbook and 2 external hard disks

Hey Guys,
I need an advice from you experts regarding the different formats to be used to format my New 4 Tb ministack from OWC. I have a Mid 2010 Intel macbook pro with 500gb hard disk using Mountain lion and two external hard disk from Samsung and Iomega 1Tb each. I want to format this ministack into 4 partitions each of 1Tb each.
1) 1 Tb for time machine to back up my macbook pro.
2) 1 Tb of Free space to be used to store extra data using both windows and mac os.
3) 1 Tb for Samsung back up
4) 1 Tb for my Iomega back up
I know that for 1st option i need to format the partition (volume) to Mac os extended (journalled). I need help for others.For the 1 Tb free space, can i use NTFS so that i can use it on my wifes windows laptop and use a third a party application like tuxera NTFS for use on my macbook which i am already using to use my samsung and Iomega Ext HDD.
Also What format is required for these two 1 Tb volumes dedicated for external hard disk backups and how can i back up my external hard disks to these formatted volumes. Do i need to format them to Mac os extended (journalled) as well as i shall be using macbook pro to back up these hard disks.
Which would be the best software to back up these Ext hdd,can i use time machine? or CCC ?
Your help help shall be gretaly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Get Disk Warrior that will repair the problems without requiring that you reformat the drive - $99.00 on a bootable CD. Will not work on a FAT formatted drive.
You will need to use Drag and Drop to save your files by copying them from the bad drive to a good one.
To reprep the 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 from the drop down menu to one. 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.

How to back up a external hard disk to time capsule?

I have a external hard disk (WD passport Mac OS extended format) connected to iMAC (OS X 10.9.3) through USB. How can I back up the hard disk to my time capsule (802.11ac 2TB)?

By default, the name of the hard drive will appear on the list of Excluded items when you open System Preferences / Time Machine / Options.
Click on the name of the hard drive to highlight it, and then click on the - (minus) button at the bottom of the Exclusions list to remove the drive from the list of items that are Excluded on backups.
Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the hard drive on the next pass.

HT1338 I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine on my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. It was going fine when my 2 yo knocked the hard drive. Now TM said "failed" and the Mac refuses to recognize the external hard drive. Help please?

I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine and using my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. All was going well when my 2 yo knocked the disk leading to a "failure" by time machine (Latest Backup: Failed). Now the MacBook will not even recognize the hard drive. I have rebooted, tried all I can think of, but no acknowledgement of the drive. The drive itself makes noise and vibrates as if working, but nothing from the Mac. Please help or $100 down the drain... Thank you.

You may have already done these resets in the "tried all I can think of " portion of your post.....if not then here they are.....
PRAM
support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
SMC
support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
.....hopefully that is all that is required.....

Time taken to format external hard disk

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