External Hard Drive will Not Format in Mac OS X

Question

External Hard Drive will Not Format in Mac OS X

I bought a brand new Western Digital 1TB hard drive for video work. When I plugged the hard drive in to my MacBook Pro I went into Disc Utility to format it Mac OS X Extended, but just after clicking the "Erase" button the format bailed and the hard drive became unreadable. I can not mount, erase, verify, or repair the drive. It does show up in Disc Utility with a strange partition name but will not mount in the Finder.

Thanks for the help, I am VERY desperate here as I need this drive for a video shoot beginning on Monday...

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Jun 21, 2008 9:04 PM

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Answer 1

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Jun 21, 2008 9:43 PM in response to EK Productions

What did you pick for the partition scheme?

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Answer 2

dechamp

Level 4

3,505 points

Jun 21, 2008 10:02 PM in response to EK Productions

Did you use firewire or USB? I'm assuming firewire because that's what I'd choose for video work.

Western Digital has firmware updates to solve firewire problems with their drives on a Mac using Leopard. I guess they cut a few corners. Since you didn't provide your exact model, you'll have to figure out which file to download:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

The drives seem to work well on USB and they work well on firewire after the updates.

Make sure you are not running any other firewire device when you try to update the firmware so that the installer doesn't get confused (happened to me 🙂 )

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Answer 3

Jun 22, 2008 9:31 AM in response to EK Productions

The hard drive is a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1 TB and I am connecting it through USB. The drive will initially mount right out of the box when it is formatted FAT32, but after I attempt to reformat it Mac OS X Extended and it bails it will no longer mount.

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Answer 4

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Jun 22, 2008 10:07 AM in response to EK Productions

Again, what did you pick for the partition scheme? If you tried to build an HFS+ partition with an MBR it may fail as you've described and it's certainly not going to mount without a valid partition.

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Answer 5

Jun 22, 2008 11:05 AM in response to orangekay

Please excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by the partition scheme?

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Answer 6

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Jun 22, 2008 11:11 AM in response to EK Productions

1. Select your drive in Disk Utility

2. Click on the "Partition" tab

3. Choose "1 Partition" from "Partition Scheme"

4. Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" from "Format"

5. Click "Options"

6. Choose "GUID Partition Table" for an Intel Mac or "Apple Partition Map" for a PPC Mac from the partition scheme choices. Do not use an MBR on a Mac volume.

7. Click "Apply" and see if it formats correctly.

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Answer 7

Jun 22, 2008 12:15 PM in response to orangekay

Thanks a lot, that worked!

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Answer 8

Aug 30, 2008 8:55 AM in response to EK Productions

I was looking for the same solution but decided to search first, and found this answer and is exactly what i was looking for.

Thanks for the guys that answered the question for me in advance.... Hehe

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Answer 9

Andreas

Level 4

1,510 points

Aug 30, 2008 4:19 PM in response to EK Productions

Not relevant to this thread, but a warning for *PPC Mac* users browsing here:

Western Digital “My Book” drives !! AVOID !!

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Answer 10

Sep 17, 2008 8:02 PM in response to workingcars

thx worked for me too

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Answer 11

Sep 19, 2008 8:34 AM in response to workingcars

Thanks orangekay, and Kappy ..I searched and it did the trick for me too ..many thanks.

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