Why is there large used space after erasing external drive with disk utility?

I just used disk utility to erase a 2 TB external hard drive. After erasing it, it shows that the disk has 12 folders, 62 files, and 852 mb of used space. I thought the "erase" function is supposed to format the disk? Where does the large used space come from?
By the way, the disk used to formatted as a windows disk. I suspect it has something to do with it but have no idea what. Any help is greatly appreciated!

HI - i do not think this is purely metadata. (though it could be with your windows disk with such small used memory) i have a 1TB macbook pro drive that i have tried to reformat
METHOD 1 (recommended by advanced Apple Techy) - select hard drive (not partition) select mac os (journalled) and press 'apply' - "this will format drive removing all data. it is always best to work with the drive and not partition, if you are formatting an entire drive."
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED
METHOD 2 (after response from Apple techy) - select hard drive and mac os (journalled), press secure erase and select 'write zeros' takes 12 hours
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED

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Problem Erasing external drive with Disk Utility

I've just purchased some Western Digital My Book Pro 1Tb firewire drives. They come pre-formatted for Windows. When I try to initialize them, Disk Utility returns a failed message & the drive then disappears from the desktop. It is still visible in Disk Utility. I can reformat as a FAT partition but not as a Mac partition. I tried connecting the drive to machine running Tiger and was able to format as a Mac partition. Is there a problem with Disk Utility in Leopard?

I have seen some behavior like this a few times before. When this happens I go to my Linux box and dd a bunch of zeros to the beginning of the drive, this will blow away any partition tables and such.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=100k
This writes 50MB of zeros to the raw device "sdb" (this may be different depending on your system)
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Hey everyone,
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Message was edited by: ewanog

No, not is not wise. Run the program and than continue. I know this takes a while, yet wait until you go to Leopard, in which the average time is over 10 minutes. But, please do not interrupt Disk Utility.
Ray

I have a Macbook Pro that was slowing down. The HD was nearly full as I do a video work. I removed over 400gb of photos and video and it made no difference. I ran disk inventory x and that says that there is only 60gb on the hard drive but disk utility sa

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You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. This is expected and can be safely ignored. The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed.
About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs

Trying to backup one of my iPhoto libraries I keep getting a error message that basically says that the file could not be backed up because there is another file on the external drive with the same name, etc. There is no other file.

While trying to copy one of my iPhoto libraries to an external hard drive I get the following error message "You can’t copy “iPhoto Library old” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames." There is no other file on the external drive with this name. I have asked this question before and was told that there are some duplicate photos (files) in my library and I needed to go to "show file contents" and look at certain files to find duplicates and delete the duplicates. I did all of this and the library will still not copy and always stops copying in the exact same place on each attempt. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You've been deleting your actual Photos.
Don't change anything in the iPhoto Library Folder via the Finder or any other application. iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things, deleting them or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
Best way forward now is to recover the surviving Originals from this library and start over from scratch.
Regards
TD

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jshafer wrote:
So, you are recommending using a USB drive into the TC or using an NAS plugged into the ethernet port...is that correct?
Yes, correct. USB drive is not fast but it is still mostly going to be faster than wireless.. it is of course slower than ethernet.. so what you are using on your clients dictates what is the rate determining step of the network.
Am I correct in thinking that an NAS using ethernet connection would be faster than USB?
Does a true NAS have its own internal backup system?
Yes, to both.. but remembering the client has to be able to make use of it. ie is also ethernet.
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Using Disk Utility to Erase an external drive freezes Disk Utility?

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To use it on your MBP you need to set the OPTION when you partition it so that it will be the Intel GUID partition scheme, then set the partition(s) you want.
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Can't boot into Windows after splitting Mac partition with Disk Utility

Hi everyone,
I installed Windows 8 with BOOTCAMP, creating a large 871 GB partition with a smaller 127 GB partition for Windows. After installing Windows, I then went back to Disk Utility to shrink the Mac partition and add two new partitions, one for storage and another blank, hoping to use it to install Linux into one day.
I did that, and now Windows doesn't boot. A Windows blue screen tells me I need to use the Windows DVD to repair it.
I tried to use Disk Utility to delete the two new partitions I made and grow the Mac partition back to the max size of 871 GB. But it doesn't let me do this. The Disk Utility log doesn't report an error and thinks it worked but the partition stays the same size. However if I make the partition a little smaller, like 870 GB then it works. I'm wondering if the Recovery partition is hiding there and preventing me from fully expanding the Mac partition.
What can I do?
Here's what I get if I type in sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0:
Code:
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168 gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0 gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1 gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167 start        size index contents 0           1         MBR 1           1         Pri GPT header 2          32         Pri GPT table 34           6 40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B 409640 1701278816      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC 1701688456     1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC 1702957992     1846360 1704804352   248002560      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 1952806912      718223 1953525135          32         Sec GPT table 1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
Here's what I get if I type sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0:
Code:
Disk: /dev/rdisk0     geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors] Signature: 0xAA55 Starting       Ending #: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID> 2: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 - 1701278816] HFS+ 3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1701688456 -    1269536] Darwin Boot *4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1704804352 - 248002560] HPFS/QNX/AUX
Here's what I get with gdisk:
Code:
Disk /dev/rdisk0: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 6075110F-7CEF-4604-85EE-6231B850E2AE Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134 Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries Total free space is 2564589 sectors (1.2 GiB) Number Start (sector)    End (sector) Size       Code Name 1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00 EFI System Partition 2          409640      1701688455   811.2 GiB   AF00 1 TB APPLE HDD HTS54101 3      1701688456      1702957991   619.9 MiB   AB00 Recovery HD 4      1704804352      1952806911   118.3 GiB   0700 BOOTCAMP

Okay, the code I typed didn't display properly in the forum. Let me try again.
Here's what I get when I type
sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0:
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 1701278816      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1701688456     1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1702957992     1846360
1704804352   248002560      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1952806912      718223
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
And when I type fdisk /dev/rdisk0 I get:
Disk: /dev/rdisk0          geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 - 1701278816] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1701688456 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1704804352 - 248002560] HPFS/QNX/AUX
Kappy,
I can boot into OS X just fine so if possible, I'd like to avoid reformatting everything. If you know of a way I can add more than 2 partitions with OS X and Boot Camp, please let me know. As far as I know, rEFInd can recognize more than two partitions, but I don't think it can edit partitions on a GPT / hybrid MBR system. Or am I wrong?

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
3. So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
4. No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

How do I get back my files from an erased hard drive? (disk utility)

Under the advice of another Mac user, I used the Disk Utility application to 'erase' and reformat my MacBook Pro to 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' so that I could copy files that were on my MB to my hard drive and it erased everything on my hard drive.
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Thanks you

It won't help, but here is an explanation:
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Hello Everyone,
I am in dire need of assistance I am hoping someone could provide. I have a MacBook 4,1 with Intel Core 2 Duo processor 4GB Ram. It is taking over 10 minutes to boot up past the gray apple screen when I turn it on. First I cleared the PRam (?) then I checked the disk using Disk Utility Verify, and it said the disk needed repairs. So I ran the disk repair and it said it was unable to fix the errors on the HD.
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THe 4SNS error is a sensor error. You could install iStat Pro to see if something is indeed getting too hot or remaining room temp or less. You may need to take it into an Apple shop so they can use their thermal diagnostics to test and isolate it further.

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