Hi, I've just recently bought a 1TB external hard drive. It was in NTFS, so I decided that I would format it to Mac OS Extended Journaled(HFS+) and then get MacDrive so I could also use it on my windows partition. I went to Disk Utility and then to erase and then I picked the format and selected no zeroing or whatever and hit erase. for the past 8 hours, it has said "partition size not a multiple of 4k". Is there something wrong? Is it safe to unplug my HD or stop the formating? Is that what it is supposed to say?
20" Imac White 2.16GHZ 1GB Ram 250GBs, 1TB External HD,
Mac OS X (10.5.1),
Leopard fixed all of my problems :)
I had the same issue with a new drive I just got. It's a 750 gigabyte drive. I found that in order for it to be formatted properly, I needed to partition it into two separate drives. After I did that, it was a cinch. Perhaps you should try partitioning the drive into smaller ones and then formatting it.
I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 750GB drive & attempted to erase it & received the same error.
BTW: It was SAFE to power it off & start Disk Utility again.
I found I had to partition it first, but I was able to create one large partition.
I found these instructions on Seagate's site (of course, after I figured it out):
Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Select the external drive and click on the Partition tab
Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and divide the drive into 2 (or more) partitions +............I did not do this....I created one!!!!!+
Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the GUID Partition Table radio button. Click OK.
Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with GUID Partition Table scheme.
Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)
Relaunch the Disk Utility, select the external drive
and click on the Partition tab
Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided, click on the Apple Partition Map radio button. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Install Mac OS 9 Drivers, etc.).
Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted into multiple drives with Apple Partition Map scheme.
Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility (recommended)
Thanks so much guys -- I also had a 1TB Western Digital MyBook Home Edition that failed when I tried to initialize and refused to mount. (FYI, Costco $279). When I formatted it for one partition with GUID, it re-mounted and initialized, then I re-initialized it normally with Disk Utility.
You saved me a call to Western Digital tomorrow - you rock!
I have a G5 power PC so I selected the Apple partition instead of GUID partition. I was formatting a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1TB and had the same issues. Every time I would try to reformat to OS X Extended it would just quit and unmount the drive. When I tried to format to FAT32 it would hang and say "partition size not a multiple of 4k".
I like Seagate drives but it would be nice if they just told us the steps needed to format using the mac disk utility if there are extra steps involved. I always prefer to format my drives without using any of their software.
