Trouble with Fantom drive / Disk Utility won't erase it

Until a few days ago, i had no problems with my Fantom 160 GB titanium drive. Then when i connected it to a freind's Mac, it started out OK fora few minutes, when my brother was playing around with creating an air network between the friend's computer, to which my fantom drive was attached, and my laptop. When i tried to activate the network, the Mac semi froze for a few minutes and just didn't do anything. when it started to move again, the fantom drive was showing 0 files in the finder window, and wouldn't eject.
So i turned it off and back on, which was probably a mistake; then the drive gave a message that it was unreadable.
Since i wouldn't lose too much data, i had no problem reinitializing the drive, but Disk Utility kept telling me that the erase failed.
When i try to verify the drive in Disk Utility, i get the error -9972: "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)"
This is the same text i get when i try to erase the drive, but without the error number.
I see at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302411 that this message this is bad, as Disk Utility cannot fix it.
Currently, the drive does not show up on the desktop, but it does show up in Disk Utilities. It stopped telling me the drive is unreadable.
Is this drive beyond help?

Dale,
that post is helpful, but I'm not sure how much it applies to me. My ibook shows no problems when not connected to the firewire drive, while the firewire drive started acting up when connected to another computer. i have also not been able to get the firewire drive to work on two other macs. The Fantom drive showed up as unreadable on all three, and Disk Utilities on all 3 computers failed to erase the firewire drive. By brother's had Disk Warrior & it wasn't able to do anything for the fantom drive, either.

Similar Messages

Fix my hard drive - Disk Utility won't repair

I have a powerbook g4 1.5 17" 1.5 gig ram
it has annnn 80gig hard drive
it's only about a year or 2 old
now recently i've been having hard drive trouble
when i play movies off the hard drive they kinda freeze up and stuff, not cos of the file but the hard drive it's like they're copied onto a bad sector or something.
i have files such as pictures and movies that i try to move or copy but they wont let me, or they get half way and cant copy the rest....
oh i was using bit-torrent to download some big files and it kept stuffing up with a hard drive read/write error
now the 1.7 gig i just downloaded wont open or copy to somewhere else to open it
and thats not good
so i've tried Disk Utility and got it to Verify the hard drive and it recognises some errors and stops scanning and says you need to fix it
i think one of them is a checksum/table error or something or.... i will have to get the exact error message off it later. but it tells me to fix it but i can't press the 'repair' button cos it's not available to be clicked! so that's a bugger
is there another program i can get off version tracker to help fix this or something else i can do? any way to try and recover that huge file too?
let me know what you think and i'll give u any more info that you need cos i definately dont wanna replace the hard drive!

is that just the 2 dvd set that came with the computer?
it's like a system restore disc or something
i dont have an actual OSX disc cos it came with OSX 10.4 loaded
i'm worried that my dvd restore discs will have 10.3 on them and it wont be compatible.. although i'm not sure, does anyone know what it originally shipped with?
apple-history doesn't seem to know
and the other thing
IF i do need a new hard drive what size can i upgrade to? it's 80gig now, i know they went up to 100gig at the time but can i put anything bigger in it or will it crack it?
and what kind of hard drive do i need, i'll probly buy one off ebay - so some kind of bits that help me identify it would help heaps
THEN should i pay for someone to repair it and put it in or open her up and do it myself? i'm not worried about the changing it over part it's more how do i then format it and get it ready to go into the computer
any help will be deemed HELPFUL
thanks heaps

External drive - disk utility won't display long - can't repair

Long time mac user --- this one has me stumped.
I have an external disk that I'm using for time machine. USB3.
Sometimes I'm in a hurry and I don't disconnect it properly. Looks like that's messed up the drive - I get "disk not ejected properly" now. Fine. That happens. Reformat, repair, apply journal, whatever.
But the drive doesn't show up in disk utility or `diskutil list`. Or, it does show up, for almost exactly 10 seconds. Although, now, it seems to show up for only about 2 seconds. Too little time to click on it and try to repair it.
I see the drive pop in, 'disk1', and in diskutil list, then vanishes. In the diskutil GUI, it shows up for less time than that, maybe only a second or two. Then the dreaded "Disk not ejected properly" dialog shows up. Every once in a while, OSX seems to retry and the disk pops up. When it does, it's read enough volume information to see that there is a controller, it's found a disk of the right size, it knows about the old volume, and then it vanishes. again.
Any tips? How do I "nuke from orbit" if disk utility keeps vanishing the disk before I can click on it. Lay in wait and hope a click hits it?
There must be a better way.....

Love the resounding silence here.
The problem was hardware. Even though putting in a different disk to the dock seemed to work, that would detach after about 3 minutes.
Buying a new dock and switching to it solved the problem.
I wish I knew which system log would have helped me trouble shoot this without having to buy another doc, but at least it's not a software problem.

Disk Utility won't erase iMac drive

I have a late 2012 27" iMac.
I was taking it to the Apple Store to fix The Mechanism™ broke. (The tilt hinge). As I knew fixing it would entail leaving the iMac there for several days, I cloned my drive and erased the iMac.
HOWEVER, when trying to do it, both form a USB install drive I set up AND from the Recovery Partition, Disk Utility would fail to erase the drive. It would quit and go back to the install drive directory.
I then booted back to the regular drive, manually dragged most of the stuff to the trash and emptied it. I then went back to the USB drive and tried one last time.
This time, the drive reformatted like it was supposed to. I tried again, it worked again.
I loaded Mavericks on, and packed the iMac up and went to the store (where it is now).
The "Genius" had no idea why the erasing didn't work earlier, and since things now did work, I couldn't replicate. They're diagnostic scan showed everything was good.
It's the 1TB + Fusion drive.
BEFORE I manually erased everything, there was around 120 gb free on the drive. After there was 900+gb free.
Anyone seen anything like this? Have ideas what was happening?

Kappy wrote:
There are no free utilities for defragmenting a drive. Only the cloning I described is free.
Here's what you should do:
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.
2. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. +(Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)+
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
That's what I did and it didn't work.

Disk utility won't erase a dvd-rw

i want to erase my dvd-rw and when i go to disk utility and click "completely erase" the status bar says "preparing the drive" and then "waiting for drive" and right after that a window pops up saying that i've just inserted a blank dvd, and it asks what option i want. (eject, ignore, ok;action) and the dvd doesn't get erased. any help is greatly appreciated

I am experiencing a similar problem. I have recently erased several CD RWs with Toast & Firestarter. Suddenly yesterday I try to burn a disc, but the only option showing in Disk Utility under Optiarc is The Erase section, stating "Waiting For A Disc To Be Inserted". (No First Aid, Raid, Partition sectors showing). Now, I have just erased about 10 discs but the Erase section is static. It's like it's on a loop, expecting all discs loaded to be erased. Normal CDs are rejected, but DVDs are just fine. Restarting doesn't help. Is this something that you were experiencing and have you found an answer yet.

Desktop or Disk Utility won't show External Hard Drives

The Desktop or Disk Utility won't show 2 of my old external hard drives and so they are currently unsusable. My computer however recognise other external drives.
320GB Western Digital MyBook Premium model number: WD3200D032-000
500 GB Western Digital MyBook Premium model number: WD5000E032
I have same issues both of these external drives.
The blue circle lights come on so power is getting to it.
Tried 2 USB cables, one I know for sure is working - Nothing.
I am using Lion 10.7.4 on a mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro
All efforts to help much appreciated

No they haven't worked on this computer before. I using them on my old MacBook Pro (a computer which is no longer working) which ran Snow Leopard.
The 500GB drive "stopped working" with that old MBP too
But the 320GB drive was always working with old MBP if I remember correctly.
Cheers

Disk Utility won't partition ext. drive

Hi everyone,
I would like to split my external MyBook Pro drive in two so I can keep Time machine B/ups separate, but Disk utility keeps informing me that there is not enough space! I only want approx 80gb of the remaining 105gb. Where am I going wrong. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Are you willing to erase the contents on the external hard drive? Disk utility won't subdivide existing space, you have to do the entire drive at once. However, there are utilities (I believe they are purchase/commercial only) that will sub partition an existing disk partition.

Disk utility won't let me erase my hard drive

I'm giving my old PowerBook to a family member and want to erase the HD and reinstall 10.5.4 fresh. I opened Disk Utility and selected Erase and the drive bu the Erase... button is not available (transparent). How do I do this?

That or another Mac OS X installation.
(58310)

Disk Utility won't start up in 10.5.3

I have been unable to open up my Disk Utility at all. I was able to do so earlier, perhaps with 10.5.0 while I was mounting my external hard drive. Now, I cannot mount the hard drive, and therefore cannot use Time Machine all because DIsk Utility won't open. I've diagnosed my hardware with "Disk 1" and found no problem. And, I've reinstalled the operating system. Any ideas?

Chris:
I just had the same issue on my son's MacBook. As long as you have a wired keyboard, the following will work.
1. Shut down the computer if it is on.
2. Press the power button to start the computer.
3. Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and the "s" key for single-user mode.
4. Type mount -uw / (then press the Return Key) wait for next line to appear with # root/
(there is a space between t and - and another space between w and /)
5. Then Type "passwd" (without quotation marks then press the Return Key)
6. Enter new password (this will be for the root user account) (watch your fingers when you type because it doesn't show what you are typing, then hit the Return Key after you type it.
It will prompt you to retype the new password again, so retype it again and then hit the Return Key) wait for next line to appear...
7. Then Type "reboot" (without the quotes and hit the Return Key)
after the computer restarts and comes up with the login window....
8. Login with any of your usernames just to get the desktop up.
9. After desktop comes up choose System Preferences, then choose accounts. Unlock if you have to and using the username: root ..... and the password you just setup in the single user mode You now should be able to make users including your existing user account an admin.
After you log back in under your real account, it is advisable to deactivate the root user account. To do this,
1. Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
2. From the Go menu, choose Utilities.
3. Open Directory Utility.
4. Click the lock in the Directory Utility window if you need to unlock the utility.
5. Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
6. Choose Disable Root User from the Edit menu.
Hope this helps.
David

Disk Utility won't resize a partition

Disk Utility won't resize (eliminate smaller partition from a 2-partitioned internal) Hard Drive. This is the message I get:
"Partition failed
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled."
Help files offer no information on this error. I followed the Help instructions to do this operation, but the resize doesn't work. The older, smaller partition shows up in Disk Utility but is dimmed out. It will activate at highlight, but is not recognized on the desktop.
Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?

Intel based Macs use a different partition scheme called GPL or GUID rather than what PowerPC used, APL.
You could try reformatting, or get a new system, and run BootCamp and Windows even.
Even if you've used Macs for years, there is always a place on my book shelf for this one, David Pogue's "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (Leopard Edition)"
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/02/27/1551206.shtml

Is the Macbook Pro with retina display compatible with the share disk utility?

Hi,
I was wondering whether, since the macbook pro with retina display has no cd rom drive, whether the MBP is compatible with the share disk utility like the mackbook air
VKB

there should be no reason why it wouldn't be, as that's a feature of the OS, not the hardware.

10.4.11 Installed -Safari Crashes, Disk Utility Won't Open

Installed 10.4.11 yesterday via software update on our 2.0GHz Core Duo Macbook Pro.
After installing Safari crashes seconds after opening (it freezes then crashes) and then I downloaded the 10.4.11 update from Apples website (using firefox) but Disk Utility won't open it. If I try and launch disk utility myself it just bounces in the dock once and closes. Please help!

Same here - two identical iBook G4's, both updated to 10.4.11 - one is fine and everything works, the other one has the following problems: safari crashes 100% of the time, USB devices are failing to be recognised (mouse, storage key etc).
Looking in /var/log/system there is an error message saying a previous version of a kernel module is already loaded (cant get to the original error message text sorry!).
Looking on other forums looked like a simple 'trash the cache' fix - which I did - and hey presto the usb devices started working - but not safari. Messing around trying to flush out a safari cache failed after a few attempt, as did fixing file perms, zapping PRAM, booting from open firmware, and all the other usual things mentioned in the forums.
As it happens the iBook has nothing precious on it - so though to reinstall from the original installation disk. iBook G4 specific OSX Tiger distribution disk 1 inserted, but iBook now refuses to boot from it - holding down the c key on reboot just pops up a blue screen with a folder icon on it and an alternating finder and question mark logo - as in 'error I can't find a system on this installation disk' - the iBook then boots from the internal disk - getting nowhere fast.
Out come the Leopard install disks, and iBook quite happily boots from there and is right now doing a clean install from them (like I said nothing precious on there and thats why I cant get to the original error message...).
I've seen lots of posts about folks struggling to boot from the original install disks recently - wondering if patch 11 did something to knock the OSX version number on the machine greater than the version on the shipped G4 install disks??
And there is something very odd about patch 11 that seems to have hit this iBook and not my other one - they both installed fine, they have identical software apps on them and they are both the same spec.
Can't help more than this - but given I've seen these issues raised in several places worth adding to the thread.

My disk utility refuses to erase my hard drive

I've been trying for a few years to find some way to reset my mac to factory settings. Every last thing I've tried has failed. I was hoping the disk utility thing to erase it would work but the erase button never lets me to click on it

If you previously encrypted your hard drive (FileVault2) then your drive was enrolled in apple's CoreStorage format. If so, diskutility won't let you perform certain operations, and you'd first need to use advanced diskutil options from the command line ( $ diskutil cs delete ... ) to trash the CoreStorage volume.

Trouble w/LaCie, SuperDuper, Disk Util, & strange lockups

Hi - I have a very perplexing problem that even Dave at SuperDuper (ShirtPocket Software) can't help with.
Our 5-month old LaCie external backup drive (firewire) worked great all up til today. I had been backing up my Powerbook to a volume on the drive with SuperDuper, doing a SmartBackup each time. I also had 2 other volumes that i did drag-and-drop with files from my husband's Powerbook and our iBook, which we use only for digital photography maintenance/storage.
When I tried to do a full bootable backup with my husband's Powerbook (identical to mine in config), using his named volume, SuperDuper would freeze up on the Verifying Permissions.
Then it would not let me unmount the LaCie. Then DiskUtility crashed when I tried to erase and re-partition, then his computer would NOT shut down. I had to force shut down (ouch).
so i thought I'd erase and reformat the LaCie. I plugged in my computer which up til now worked great, and - same thing. Disk Utility would not erase or partition ("could not mount disk"). During SuperDuper, mine hung up midway on the volume writing, having a fit over first "Parent Directory/Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist" and then on the volume with ".Spotlight-V100.
It also would not unmount the laCie, and would not shut down/restart. I also got a wierd message about Mirror Agent not shutting down and to force-quit it.
Ack! Now i have no backups, and our computers are buggered. I've had NO problems with our dear Macs before this. We are both running Tiger (love it).
ANY suggestions folks? MOST annoying loss of a day's productivity.
Roseann

Hi - thanks for weighing in. I solved it, after much monkeying around. Figured out that LaCie firmware needed to be updated, but some messed up permissions files kept that from happening until i downloaded the software/driver in safe mode. I tried to run SuperDuper in safe, but it would not. But by the time i logged in and out, it worked fine and i got 2 perfect backups first try in full Tiger.
Thanks!

Disk Utility failure to erase/initialize

I have a 1 TB WD MyBook Studio Edition. I sent this drive to a firm that does video conversions (from film to digital). Drive returned with expected (good) results, but now I can't write anything onto the drive - says I can only read. So I copied all files on the drive to another disk, then used Disk Utility to initialize. First Aid tab action buttons are all greyed out. Erase tab shows default format as MS DOS. I changed to Apple Extended (Journaled) and pressed OK. Process starts, but fails after a few seconds with error "Write Failure". Now disk won't mount when I attach it - only Disk Utility "sees" drive, but fails each time I try to Initialize/Erase.
What's up, and how do I correct?
Thanks

If you haven't fixed this yet, you may be able to use Disk Utility to completely erase and reformat the disk.
Click the top line of the drive, then the Partition tab. Click +1 partition+ (or however many you want) under *Volume Scheme*, then Options at the bottom. Select GUID for an Intel Mac, +Apple Partition Map+ for a PPC Mac. Setup the partition(s) you want to use on the Mac as +OSX Extended (Journaled),+ then click Apply.

Trouble with Fantom drive / Disk Utility won't erase it

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for