Mac Discussion

I just got a new 750 GB Western Digital External HD.

I thought it might be best to erase and re-format it, but when I chose Mac OS Extended (I have no idea what Mac OS Extended Journaled or Case Sensative means) it keeps coming up with an error.

It will let me format MS-DOS (FAT) but I've got no idea what that is either.

Help a fool here, do I need to bring this drive back and swap it for another, or is this one okay as is, or with a slight adjustment on my part?


Mac Mini 1.86/ 10.5.2

Use EXTENDED Journaled and no others. Stay away from FAT or case sensitive. Yes, reformat before you do anything else to the drive. Do not use AS-IS fresh out of the box. The "box formatting" may not be agreeable with any Apple disk maintenance proceedings and force you to erase the drive to make it usable again.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 02/22/08 05:13PM by toetag.

I just tried to format with Extended Journaled and it comes up the the message

Disk Erase failed with the error.

File system formatter failed

Try this - run Disk Utility, select the new drive and hit the Partition tab. Select 1 Partition, make sure the format is set to Mac OS Extended and press the Apply button. See if that works where the Erase function won't.

"Partition failed with the error:

File system formatter failed"

Is this a WD piece of shite, or is there another way to beat this into submission?

Thanks.

Since you asked, I've had very bad luck with WD drives including their recent efforts with the "book" style case. Very inconsistent and often just disappearing from the desktop while in use. Seagate has always been rock solid for me. That's just my experience, I'm sure others will have similar and differing experiences, take it for what it's worth.

Okay, one last try before it goes back. Try erasing it using MS-DOS (FAT) format and see if that works.

I guess you've tried power cycling the drive and your Mac, right?

It'll erase with MS-DOS(FAT) but if I try and then erase it with Extended Journaled, it comes up with:

newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisks2s1: partition size not a multiple of 4k

and it hangs up with the sideways barber pole spinning non-stop.

Try updating the firmware; more here: [www.macintouch.com]

1/20/2013

Tried the firmware, same result:

File system Formatter Failed.

I guess it goes back, big hassle too, it's wayy out of my way. Last WD I'll buy.

Out of curiosity, it the external drive USB or Firewire? I find any/all USB external's I've used to be flaky in one way or another.

Also, in my experience, while I haven't had trouble with WD drives, I've had trouble with all varieties of external cases. You might be better off buying an internal drive (WD or not) and a case separately. I would get a case known to work well with Macs, like most of the cases at OWC.

[eshop.macsales.com]

Try again to partition the drive- that is the key to reformatting any windows formatted drive in Leopard. Unfortunately, we do something else first, which mucks things up. Power down the drive. restart it, then try to partition it(1 partition,Mac OS Extended). I had the same problem with my Seagate 750 Free Agent Pro. I couldn't get it to partition until I powered it down, restarted it, then it partitioned OK. Good luck.

It's a USB 2 External drive.

Won't partion at all...File system Formatter Failed.

I've never had a drive do this before! Guess I've been lucky.

Shut your computer down. Unplug the USB cable from the drive. Unplug the power cable from the drive. wait 15 seconds. Put the USB back into the drive. Repower the drive. Restart the Computer.. Try to Partition the drive now.

It won't let me make one big partition, but if I divide it in two it allows the Extended Journal to work on Partition 1 but when you select Partition 2 it's greyed out, think that'll be a problem?

Surfrider, you are not alone - I just bought a 750GB Maxtor OneTouch III external drive to use with Time Machine and have been unable to erase and reformat it using Disk Utility. It uses the Master Boot Record partition map scheme which I understand limits its use with Time Machine to a maximum partition size of 512GB. Disk Utility was able to partition the drive into one 510.8GB and one 187.8GB partition, and the two partitions both show up as Mac OS Extended (journaled). So far it's working OK with Time Machine; we'll see what happens when it fills up... I think I'll put a bootable copy of my drive on the second partition.

**********
24" iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 20" iMac 2.1 GHz G5, 17" iMac 1.25 GHz G4, and 15" MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

My second partition won't show up as Extended Journaled, it's grey'd out, it's 80 GB of 700, but I'd like to use it.

What to do, what to do....or is everything cool and I can sleep soundly?

Surfrider:

Here's how you correct this.

Go into Partition and if you want 1 partition, just leave it at 1. However, click the Options... button underneath that Volume Scheme and select either GUID Partition Table or Apple Partition depending on if you have an Intel or PowerPC. The default (at least on mine) was set to Master Boot Record which is for Windows. I created one big partition using GUID (in my case) and then was able to go back and "Erase" it to make it Journaled and its working fine now. Initially, I had this same problem as well.

Plainestudios-

Thank you. This worked for me. I had a WD 500GB MyBook that died and I just replaced it with a Seagate 750GB Freeagent.

Mike

Hi,
I have a problem with a 1TB WD MyBook. It shows up on the 10.4 system and I can use the disk utility for it, but when I connect it to my 10.5.5 it does not even show up in the Finder window or on the Desktop.
I do not know what to do with it.
Can anyone help me with this issue?
Thanks