.DS_Store... How do I get rid of that?

If I reformat the drive as Mac OX Extended, will I lose all the other functions of the drive, namely radio, video, audio recording, etc.? If the answer is yes, then may be I should leave it as is and do the future music and photo download from a PC? The main function of this drive for me is to download photos from the camera when I go traveling, so I don't have to bring many memory cards.

Then here's another question, I plan to buy a desktop HD for backup of all files on the Mac. Could you recommend a brand that will not give me this problem? A Western Digital? An Iomego? Or what should I watch out for? Thanks a lot.

If you are able to record to the drive from your Mac with the drive in FAT32 format, you will certainly be able to do so in Mac OS Extended format. Mac OS Extended is the current standard format for all Mac hard drives. It's the format of your Mac's internal hard drive, and if you can record to that drive you can record to any other drive in that format. The only reason to keep your external hard drive in FAT32 format is to use it with a Windoze PC, and that's only because Microsoft refuses to enable Windoze to read Mac-formatted disks. If you want to read Mac-formatted disks on a PC, you can always install MacDrive on the PC. Since the technology to read Mac disks on PCs obviously exists, it's only Microsoft's obstinacy that prevents it from becoming part of Windoze.

The problem you speak of is simply that the FAT32 filesystem has no defined place, as the Mac filesystem does, for some of the information that a Mac file contains. A FAT32 drive stores that part of the Mac file's data as a separate file. The Mac OS realizes that, and when you copy the two parts of the file from a FAT32 disk back onto a Mac-formatted disk, the Mac OS automatically re-integrates them into a single, correctly structured Mac file, as long as you haven't renamed either of them.

The brand of the drive is not the issue, and no other brand will behave differently if you leave it in its factory FAT32 format. The format of the drive is the only issue.

I erased the volume and reformatted the drive to Mac OS Extended, loaded everything back to the drive and disconnected the drive. When I turned it back on, it said partition not found and the HD icon showed a red UNF. Please tell me how to restore the HD. Thanks a lot.

I erased the volume and reformatted the drive to Mac OS Extended, loaded everything back to the drive and disconnected the drive.

Did you unmount the drive from the desktop before turning it off or disconnecting it? If not, that's why it was wrecked, and you'll have to start over from scratch with it. Disconnecting or turning off a drive (or partition on a drive) while its icon appears on the Mac desktop is almost always disastrous. Always select the drive/volume's icon by clicking once on it, then use the Eject key, type Command-E, or drag the icon to the Trash, before you turn it off or disconnnect its FireWire or USB cable from the Mac.

Yes, I always unmount/eject it before disconnecting. When I turned it back on, it said Paths do not exist, Partition not found, HD icon UNF. Can I use Disk Utilities Restore to restore what had been erased? and How? and What is checksum? Please help.

Hi again, ckok. The formating and partitioning of the drive were obviously successful, because if they hadn't been, you wouldn't have been able to write all your files back onto the drive afterward. So it's clear that something significantly detrimental happened during or after the process of writing everything back to the drive that you haven't told us about. I don't suggest that you're holding information back deliberately — but something did happen, whether or not you recognized it as significant enough to mention here, and I can't guess what it was. Can you think of anything else you did or noticed before unmounting and disconnecting the drive?

The followings is the whole process:
1) After I downloaded everything to my desktop, I opened Disk Utilities. The Wolverine HD showed 2 images - Wolverine Media and Wolverine. The info showed Wolverine as the volume with MS-DOS, so I checked that to erase.
2) After erasing, I changed the MS-DOS to Mac OS Extended and the volume showed as Mac OS Extended.
3) I copied all the files from my desktop back to the HD > Eject > Turned off HD > Disconnect from Mac > Turned on HD. All the icons showed up, but it also showed Paths do not exist. When I clicked on an icon, it showed Partition not found. I moved to the HD icon and it showed UNF.
4) I connected the HD back to the Mac. Open Disk Utilities, click Wolverine and went to Partition. Changed the name to something else and check Partition 1. I also changed the option to Apple scheme.
5) ok and redid the process of downloading the info back to the HD again before disconnecting it from the Mac.
6) The result was the same - Paths do not exist, Partition not found and UNF HD.
I probably shouldn't have touched the Partition part, but when it said partition not found, I thought that was where I should change. From there on, I won't dare to change anything any more. Please help. Thanks.

Message was edited by: ckok. Sorry, no edit.

Hmm, it kind of sounds like you did an erase first (which would leave the drive in the same format it was to begin with) and then simply changed a drop down menu to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) without actually performing the action. Or, you did the partition after an erase. That won't work since the partition only creates the volume. If you don't do an erase after partitioning, then the volume(s) don't contain a proper file table. Try again following the instructions below.

1) Launch Disk Utility and choose the FireWire drive in the left pane. Click on the very top name of the drive, which is its physical description (Hitachi, Seagate, WD, etc.), NOT the volume names you created.

2) Click the Partition tab at the right. Under "Volume Scheme", change the pulldown choice, which defaults to "Current" to however many partitions you want. Even if it's one, select 1 partition.

3) Make sure to do this step, which may be why you're having problems. Click on the Options button and choose the radio button for "Apple Partition Map". I have a feeling it's been on "Master Boot Record". Click OK.

4) Give the volume a name (you can do that afterwards from the desktop if you want). Choose Mac " OS Extended" as the format and click the Partition button.

5) Once the partitioning is done. Click the Erase tab. In the left pane, choose each volume name you created (if you made more than one partition), NOT the drive's physical name, and click the Erase button for each partition/volume.

No, did not work. The result is the same. I did exactly as you listed. The problem is why the HD is unfound? Another thing I noticed is when I click the info on the volume, it listed the number of partition as 3 and not 1. But I only click 1 partition.

Another thing I noticed is when I click the info on the volume, it listed the number of partition as 3 and not 1.

Ah, that's likely the problem. There's (probably corrupt) partition information from previous attempts that Disk Utility isn't seeing. After you set it up with "one partition", the Mac must be seeing those bad ones first upon remounting and then assuming something's wrong with the drive.

If you have a Windows computer handy, connect the drive to Windows and turn the FireWire drive on. I only know how to do this in XP. Right click on the Task Bar and choose Properties. Click the Start Menu tab and then the Customize button. Turn on the check box for "Display Administrative Tools". Click OK. Click OK again to close the Properties box.

Click Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Click on Disk Management in the left pane. Expand the box as much as necessary to see all of your mounted drives and partitions in the lower right pane. If the FireWire drive shows three partitions, then this is a piece of cake. The Mac partition you just created will show up as an Unknown Partition. Actually, they probably all will. Anyway, right click on each one and choose Delete Partition from the contextual menu that drops down. You'll now have a blank drive you can bring back to the Mac. Follow the directions above again to create a single Mac partition.

The reason I suggest this route is since Disk Utility isn't seeing the other two partitions, the only way I know of to get rid of them in OS X would be to do a zero erase of the drive. That can take a very long time. Using XP to remove the two extra partitions will be much faster, if it can see them.

When I connect it to Window, Window sees 2 drives, or may be partitions and tells me to insert disk when I click on either one of them. I don't even get to see the drive mounted because there is no disk to insert. I guess it's now in Mac, PC can't see it either. It's now totally messed up.

It's telling you to insert a disk because it doesn't recognize the format. Are you saying you can't right click on a partition either?

If that's the case, then bring the drive back to your Mac and use Disk Utility to do a zero write erase (single pass). This will easily take a few hours depending on the size of the drive. After it's done, repartition the drive.

Zero write erase - when I click the security erase option, there are 4 options for me to choose, do you mean I should click the Zero Out Data button? There is also an Erase Free Space option in that image box. What is that? Please advice. Thanks.

This is an update info to last message:
When I look at the HD info, 1 of the listings is Owner Enable, and it says No. Does that mean I'm not supposed to change anything and any change will have to be done by the HD company? Under Reformat, it listed Yes.

Yes, use the "Zero Out Data" button for a one pass zero write of every sector on the drive. You're seeing the Owner Enabled information because you selected the volume name in Disk Utility rather than the drive. Select the drive itself in the left pane before going into the Erase function. You can set ownership of the drive after doing the zero write erase/partitioning, though there's normally no reason to change it from the defaults.

Ignore the Erase Free Space option. That's for zero write erasing only the areas of the drive that currently have no live data on it. We want to erase the whole thing to (hopefully) make sure whatever is throwing off the Mac when you try to remount the drive is erased.