External HD Problem in Snow Leopard

PW: Kenny's solution is not 100%. It may work for others, but did not work for me or those of whom ext. HDs are connected via Firewire 400/800. It's still worth a try.

Okay, apologies. I'd did work for me on my LaCie drive connected by FW400. As you say worth a try.

my hds are connected via usb and it didnt work for me either. still says it cant unmount the volume

Y-Guy wrote:
Add me to the frustrated list about this. Finally got a couple drives for my RAID box and its not formatting. Equally as irritated that Apple hasn't replied to this problem after 4 pages.

We're all just fellow users here; to get Apple's attention on an issue, contact AppleCare.

I'm about ready to give up trying to fix this or even recover the lost data.
Does anyone know if this is the kind of issue that apple could solve via a snow leopard software update?
It barely seems worth the hassle of trying to get a replacement from seagate and still having the same issues.

I opened a ticket on this issue last night and Apple made me scratch and reinstall my OS thinking it may have been a OS corruption issue. After doing the restore from Time Capsule, the drive behaved the same way via FW but it seems as though via USB, it is working. Im not in front of the machine now but Ill seek to move more data to the drive to make sure the copy process isnt locking up like it was before.

Folks - just some more 2 cents. I decided I wanted to use a new 1T bus-powered FW drive (the WD GoFlex) to host my Time Machine backups. Lucky for me the old TM drive I was trying to clone was an Other World Computing model that's got both USB and FW ports, so I was able to try a little tinkering.

Long story short: Nothing worked in either Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner. Tried reformatting, repartitioning, Firewiring, copying via USB 2.0 - with the 'allocate memory error' every time.

Almost on a whim I tried Super Duper! for the clone and guess what - it worked fine.

?! Not being a technical sort I have no idea why this solution worked where others failed. I wound up running the program overnight using my old MBP, which has FW 400 and 800 ports - in contrast to my new IMac, which only has FW800 😟 As this was about 600GB+ worth of data it took about ten hours, but I'm currently using the clone to host my Time Machine backups.

FYI. This is probably worth a try for anyone beating their heads against the wall trying to get an external drive to duplicate.

Has Apple released a fix for this?

*Here's my problem:*
I need to install Snow Leopard from a USB drive because my DVD drive crashed on my MacBook. I tried the using Restore method in Disk Utility, but it fails with the error: "cannot allocate memory".

I have tried multiple combinations of 2 Verbatim flash drives and 1 firewire external hard drive with 5 installation DVD's on 2 different iMacs running Snow Leopard and to no avail.

Not sure I understood this correctly - but you are trying to install SL on a Macbook with install media from iMacs? That will not work - install media have always been machine specific. You'd have to either use the install media that came with the Macbook or a retail SL disk.

Hard to believe this is still such an issue. I have read every single one of these posts, tried every single fix I could (no FW on this WD ext HD); nothing.

Well, not nothing. I can get the HD to partition and format. The trouble now comes when I try to erase free space. This causes the HD to become unmountable. I've tried from terminal, etc. The only way to unmount it is to shut the computer down.

For the record, I first got the HD (after a dozen hours trying) to mount on a different OS, then switched back. But while I was successful at last in partitioning the drive, still if freespace was tried to be erased even from an earlier OS, the drive would then become unmountable.

Is this a clue? I don't know enough about what's going on to tell. It seems the drive can't be partitioned and formatted if the drive is unmountable; unmounting seems preliminary to rewriting. In my case the 'unmountability' seems to have been preliminary to the dreaded POSIX message as well as some other errors.

No one seems to have addressed the question of reliability following all this. (Apart from the user convinced Seagate is the problem and/or Hitachi is the fix; jettisoned by at least one other).

Also for the record -- it's possible the fix for me came at last by formatting from the startup disk utility -- can't quite remember now. It's been a very, very long night...

I would be happy to complain to Apple *if I could figure out which of their 5 dozen contacts is appropriate.* Would someone please indicate where/how to complain to them?? Thank you very much. Though perhaps it's not necessary as one user indicated having received a message from Apple (back in March I think) that this was a known problem. Evidently still with unknown solution. Weird....

In my case, this is definitely, at least, a disk-unmounting problem.

I can, with effort, at last get the disk to format. But writing to it eventually fails on my big iphoto library file (smaller files will write); don't know if it's a time-issue or size. Changing to a different usb cable doesn't matter.

Eventually get an error (code -36) saying can't read/write a certain file so the transfer failed. (which I think is what also happens when I try to free-erase, different code though I think)

The ext HD is clicking; won't unmount or eject from anywhere in DU

Opening finder and clicking eject button next to HD under devices in the left column gets a prompt for an emergency eject that may corrupt files. Take it and the disk disappears from the finder window, not DU. The HD still clicks away furiously (which it had started to do when the file stopped transfering).

Disconnect the HD, replug and the HD no longer clicks. It can be ejected normally from DU. It can be reformated. Still no clicking.

Transfer can be re-attempted (for the hundredth time), all's well for 30 min, then repeat...

I offer this in case it provides any clue. Not that Apple's reading... (whyever not???)

BTW -- disk gets regularly repaired to no avail.

Have any of you who are having this problem with HD's made from enclosure kits checked that the enclosure is Mac compatible?

I would if I could, but that's really pushing my limits of knowledge. I'm only barely computer-literate, I realize, following all the hours I've spent googling and reading about what people know and do.

But I have read about many people doing this, checking the disk housing. It seems to often, but not always, help (others).

Checking a hard drive enclosure sounds like a job for one with a screwdriver. I would be terrified to touch electronics with a screwdriver (that's not actually true; I just did so for the first time last week and it was rather thrilling. Still... I'm just not up for it yet).

Hello All..

POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory. <- my error

I have a WD 1TB elements, which I have been successfully using for the past one year, suddenly on connection it showed me this error.

I tried most of the suggestion that was posted earlier.. with little result.. my log goes like this..

1. No joy with Disk utility on SL 10.6.4

2. No joy with Recovery Disk of Snow leopard. It then gave me Input. Output error.

3. Could not partition in any way in either through SL or recovery disk.

4. No joy with Terminal codes either.

5. Couldn't event initialize it through windows XP.

6. Softwares like drive genius also did not work.

I just tried everything that was posted on this forum but wil little success. I just want to know if my drive is recoverable. The data in it not important but the drive is.

I still looking for OS tiger for trying it through it.. fingers crossed.

I want to know if there is any other way to salvage this HDD.. I do not mind it to be in FAT32 format as I have other drives that are HFS+..

Please help

Snow leopard updated today.
Anyone find if that helps solve this problem?
Couldn't see anywhere on the updates that it does though I heard a while back the update would address existing problems with USB devices?!