Formatting New External Disk - Resource Busy Error

Best you read their documentation. That's a RAID enclosure, so I you need to read their manual to find out how it is properly used.

Typically, you would click on the erase tab to format an external HD. It's possible that you need to do that before you partition...or it's possible you have a bad HD or a bad enclosure. Do you have access to another computer (PC or Mac) to try this with?

The fact that you just bought it really doesn't make it more or less likely that it doesn't work correctly. I hope that doesn't sound smug...it's just that things can arrive doa.
Have you tried it with all other USB devices disconnected (except the keyboard and mouse)? Are your keyboard and mouse 3rd party or original Apple hardware? Are you using a USB hub by any chance?

As Kappy said, if it is a RAID enclosure, there may be more to it than just using DiskUtility to fire it up. There may be a driver to install, and there may be some sort of utility for creating the RAID. Then you can use DU to format it.

I have an external RAID attached to a server. I had to install a driver, then use a browser based utility to create the RAID volume. Once I created the volume, I used DU to format it.

hth

Jeff

I looked at their website - they really offer no significant tips for OS X. I'd call them. There's no mention of any extra drives or setup needed - so it looks like the enclosure just isn't working properly. But like I said, with so little onfo on their web site, it's hard to say anything.

I have recently purchased a Nexstar MX Dual external drive bay also. Having the exact same problems as the OP. Works just fine on my Windows XP machine, can make and format partitions in any of of the internal drive configurations (individual, jbod, raid 0 and raid 1). If i set it up on the windows machine i can at least see it and mount it on the mac, but then when i try to format it to a Mac OS extended, i either get the "resource busy error" if i try to create partitions, or if i try to erase it seems to work but Disk Utility just idles, saying "disk partition is not a multiple of 4k" not HDD indicator lights on the enclosure are blinking, therefore i would assume it's not actually doing anything to the drive.

Have emailed vantec support, hoping they will get back to me soon, anyone else have any ideas, or did the OP manage to get it working?

I also faced the same problem on Vantec device. No response from their support team yet. I even posted them the detail log as below:
------------error messages----------
Sep 6 16:02:30 macmini Disk Utility[263]: ********
Sep 6 16:02:30 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Disk Utility started.
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Preparing to partition disk: “WDC WD10 WD-WCAU4143 Media”
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Map
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers installed
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: 1 volume will be created
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]:
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Partition 1
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Name : “Untitled 1”
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Size : 931.5 GB
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]:
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Creating partition map.
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini kernel[0]: disk1: operation was aborted.
Sep 6 16:02:39 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Partition failed for disk WDC WD10 WD-WCAU4143 Media Resource busy
Sep 6 16:02:40 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Partition complete.
Sep 6 16:02:40 macmini Disk Utility[263]:
Sep 6 16:02:41 macmini Disk Utility[263]: Error with partition: Resource busy
------------error messages----------

As a workaround, I format the drive into FAT32 so that I can r/w properly.

I have a SANS Digital MobileStor MS2UTN USB/eSATA enclosure that has a similar problem. When I attempt to format it I get the "resource busy" error. A little bit of research on the web shows that both Vantec and SANS digital use Silicon Image chipsets on their external storage systems. I don't know if this is a problem related to that chipset and its interaction with Leopard. No drivers should be necessary for the Vantec as it should present as a standard USB storage device and therefore the standard system drivers should handle it (I mean really, when was the last time you had to install a device driver for a USB storage device? That's the whole goddamned point of USB and FireWire! if your hardware is built to spec and your firmware is good the OS should be able to handle these things, this isn't like the old days of having to load 27 different SCSI device drivers to get your Adaptec card working in DOS or hacking your kernel in SunOS 4.1 to get it to see a new tape drive.).

I was able to get my MobileStor formatted with HFS+ using a PC and I believe the "MacDrive" utility. I have also seen information online that this bug can be worked around by using the version of Disk Utility that comes with the Tiger install media. Now I just need to find my Tiger disk.

OK, so I did a little research. Vantec uses a Silicon Image chipset on the NexStar MX. I don't know which one, I couldn't find out from searching via Google, only a mention on the Newegg.com website for the NexStar 4MX that a user had a problem with his Vantec because the Silicon Image utilities weren't included. The SANS Digital MobileStor RAID that I was having the "resource busy" error with uses a Silicon Image 5744 chipset. SANS Digital is pretty lame and the only configuration utility that they had available was for Tiger and crashed under Leopard with an access violation error.

I went to Silicon Image's website and downloaded a new version of the SteelVine utility that would run under Leopard. Once I did that I installed the utility and rebooted my system. After rebooting the SteelVine Manager ran properly and I was able to check the firmware version of my external enclosure. The firmware on my MobileStor was one revision out of date. I used the SteelVine Manager to install the new firmware version, power cycled the enclosure and lo and behold, upon powering on my Mac told me that I had just connected a disk that could not be read and asked me if I wanted to initialize. I clicked "yes" and disk utility came up and I was able to partition the RAID. Just to check I rebooted the system and then ran Disk Utility again, deleted the partition that I had created and then recreated it.

Check your Vantec to see what chipset it uses and if it is a Silicon Image chipset go to Silicon Image's website:

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/

You'll want to look under RAID Storage Processors for the files that you need. Find the link for your chipset and open the page, on the right hand side of the page you'll see an item labeled "Support Tools". Download and install the configuration manager utility. Once you've done that you can launch the utility, SteelVine Manager, and see what version of firmware your enclosure is running. The version I was having problems with was version 1.5.16. The version that fixed the problem was 1.5.76, you'll want to download the package that is labelled "Upgrade by GUI".

Follow the instructions in the SteelVine Manager utility help files and upgrade the firmware on your box. This took about 15 minutes on my system. Once the upgrade was completed I cycled the power on the MobileStor and was then able to partition and format it with Disk Utility. I hope this helps.

Jamie

Thanks for the tip - I verified this fix with a SimpleTech 1TB external disk as well. It also was running 1.5.16 and upgrading to 1.5.76 fixed the problem.

You are correct. I'm posting my experience:
Problem I was trying to solve:
Hard drives installed in a Vantec NexStar MX (dual disk enclosure) could not be erased using Disk Utility. Disk Utility gave error "Formatting New External Disk - Resource Busy Error".
(1) Went to http://www.siliconimage.com/products/. From there, went to "RAID Storage Processors" hyperlink. This brought up a page noting 4 possibilities:
* SiI4726 - 5 Drive SATA300
* SiI5723 Storage Processor
* SiI5734 Storage Processor
* SiI5744 Storage Processor

Of these 4 options, the description for the first (SiI4726) says something about "5 device". Since my enclosure can only hold 2 devices (drives), that can't be the correct one. The description for the second (SiI5723) says it is "built into DVRs, PC motherboards and consumer electronic devices" but says nothing about use for external storage. So that is not right either. The description for the third (SiI5734) says it is for "single-drive external enclosures and external backup drives". Remember that the Vantec NexStar MX is a dual disk enclosure. Therefore, it too must not be the right processor. By elimination, the Vantec NexStar MX must use the SiI5744 Storage Processor.
(2) Select the "SiI5744 Storage Processor" hyperlink. You should now be on the "SiI5734 Storage Processor" page. When I did it, this was the hyperlink: http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=104
(3) Under "Support Tools", select "Firmware" to download the actual firmware. Once downloaded, expand (unzip) it.
(4a) Also under "Support Tools", select the "Configuration Manager" hyperlink, select your O/S from the drop-down list. You should be on a page noting "Product: SiI5734 Storage Processor
Category: Configuration Manager
O/S: Mac OS X".
(4b) Select the "SiI57xx SteelVine Manager for Mac OS X Leopard" hyperlink... or whatever is appropriate for you.
(4c) Once downloaded, install the SteelVine Manager.
(5) On the "SiI5744 Storage Processor" page, select the "User Guide" link. Download the latest version of the "SiI57xx SteelVine Manager User's Guide".
(6) Start SteelVine Manager. Follow its simple instructions to upgrade the firmware. You'll need to browse to the location you unzipped to in step (3) above. The firmware upgrade takes a about ten minutes.

Thank you thank you thank you. I have had a frustrating/interesting holiday break, when my wife's prefab Maxtor external enclosure (1TB in RAID 0 -- which I never should have been running) died. I have built NexStar enclosures before (I'm brand loyal to them now) but always with NTFS or FAT32 drives, but this time I wanted them to be Mac Extended. For the life of me could not get the NexStar MX to repartition or erase drives on the Mac, and since I'm dealing with MacBooks, I couldn't just pop a drive into the case and format it that way.

Your exceptionally clear directions worked perfectly. My MX (bought it new today) did have the SI 5744 chip with the 1.5.16 firmware from last year, and SteelVine worked exactly as you described (FWIW, I didn't have to have the drives in the enclosure when I updated the firmware, and I also tried the Windows app -- it worked the same way, only the PDF Help file didn't want to show up.)

After that, I was able to load up the enclosure, connect it to the Mac, and partition the drives as GUID with no issues.

I only wish I had found your instructions sooner, but better late than never. Thanks again!