External HD Problem in Snow Leopard

POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory


Hey all- i am having dramas with new Hard Drive DOCKS.
i have tried two in the past week with the same issues!
i am not talking about the hard drives, i am talking about the actual hard drive "dock" {a type of enclosure}

my first attempt was with the Vantec NexStar Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock:
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/372

my second attempt is with the Winstar communicator D2 combo:
http://winstars.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008814464080/pdtl/Wired-perip heral-sharing/1014031316/Dual-HDD-Docking.htm

both of these items are a great idea, and they both say on the box etc that they work with mac.

BUT! on my main work machine, a 2 year old 24 inch iMac here is what happens:

- i plug it in via USB {no firewire options with these docks}

- i get the "initialise" pop up.

- opens disk utility.

- just the hard drive dock with no drives in it, is listed in disk utility as the following:
"8.59 GB Config AL1 12345678_0J Media"

- no matter what i do in disk utility to the dock it comes back with:
"Disk Erase failed with the error:
POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory"

no matter what drives i plug into it, nothing.

BUMMER! i really love these plug and play hard drive docks- great, but so annoyed that snow leopard does not like them!

any suggestions are welcome. i have tried everything listed in these forums.

thanks.

Just adding myself to the list, getting the same error using 10.6.2 -- here's the drive & enclosure info:

Drive - Western Digital WDC WD10 01FALS-40U9B0 Media
Enclosure - Antec MX-1 connected via USB to Mac Mini 10.6.2

I've just joined the club. Having the same problems with my external harddrive and have tried everything beside the firewire solution. But is that really necessary? Will keep you posted if I find the solution.

This is a vexing problem especially since it doesn't happen to all USB drives - my assumption is that it tied to the enclosure's firmware and/or USB chipset. For those who have faced it (and I have with one of my oldest enclosures) the solutions seem to be using FW (assuming that's an option for your enclosure) or formatting it on a computer with a different OS version. In my case, I booted with my Leopard DVD and formatted the drive.

Ok so I have several HDs externals down with same probs as everyone else. But now enclosures are failing with not powering up at all! This problem has been posted many times for a very long time. Maybe bad karma picking on Vista?
In any case I have 4 HDs down. Being a video guy this really makes life rough.
And I will not even talk about my music HD. 😟
Apple needs to at least acknowledge this massive problem, and be the responsible company I have always praised.

But now enclosures are failing with not powering up at all!

You are talking about a completely different issue here and it sounds more hardware than software. I suggest that you start a new thread with your problem and supply more information: enclosure brand and interface as well as whether the enclosure(s) are powered by a brick or via computer.

Very similar story for me too except I have my iMac drive partitioned - one with Snow Leopard, one with Leopard. Time Capsule problems with the SL partition, none with Leopard. External hard drive issues with Snow Leopard, none with Leopard. This is using the same hardware, same ports, same cables. The only difference is the OS.

Totally fed up with Apple's arrogance.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2277729&tstart=0

Cheers

rich

Add my name to the list of dissatisfied users having the POSIX problem. Tried every suggested solution posted here except swapping cables - the hardware is at an ISP miles away. Not good Apple.

Well I think I've fixed my external hard drive problem.

I reformatted in Leopard then copied all the files back and now it mounts in Snow Leopard and allows me access to all the files. Snow Leopard wouldn't even format the drive!

The bizarre thing is I did the same with the external drive I used to back up my Time Capsule containing all my media files and now that mounts normally too - still connected via USB to the rear of the TC. Prior to that both the TC and the back up would not mount or allow me direct access to the files.

So all in all a good result as I now have all my media files available wirelessly to every computer in the house, plus a clone of the media drive directly attached to my iMac and Time Machine looking after my back-ups on the Time Capsule.

It's only taken about four days to get to this point but at least everything is working again - for now.

Cheers

Rich

Reporting in with the same issue. I've been using a Maxtor 1394 external Firewire drive (no USB connection) on my G4 through at least 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and now 10.6.2 (snow leopard) on a new Mac Mini. But I've been using it in its default format, which is the PC FAT-whatever. Now that I'm on a new Mac, I realized that TimeMachine won't back it up because it's the wrong format.

So I tried to erase, reformat, repartition, whatever, and got the same error as everyone else (POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory.). I went through all these posts and tried everything I could. Using Terminal command doesn't work--same error. Trying to fake it out with free space didn't work. Can't reformat it on a pc because no firewire connection on the PC. Restore won't work because I don't have an existing disk partition small enough--at least got errors about not enough space on the disk instead of the memory thing, but still wouldn't format. Didn't really want to buy or download someone else's software.

Luckily I still have an old macbook with 10.3 installed. Fired that up, had no problem reformatting/partitioning/whatever into mac extended format, then when I moved the drive back to my Mac Mini w/SL, it was perfectly happy.

I will report my experience to apple, too, as has been suggested here earlier. I don't know what people will do who don't have access to other systems.

Got it to work!

First, I tried everything here and nothing worked for me: 1) free space 2) using terminal 3) restore 4) Boot from install disc and use that disk utility, etc etc etc. I also tried from a machine with leopard (10.5). And it still didn't work.

What worked for me was to use a friend's Windows machine, go to Disk Manager (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management (local)). Now right click on your external hard drive in the lower menu and initialize the drive. Now, right click on it again (on the area that says 'unpartitioned' or something similar) and click on either partition or format (I don't remember which it said, just choose it.). Then it will ask how large you want the partition to be, choose 30,000mb (30GB)

THIS IS IMPORTANT. You must choose a size 32 GB or smaller b/c XP apparently cannot create FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB. Thus, if you errantly choose something larger than 32GB, the next screen will only allow you to select NTFS, but we need FAT32! So partition a 30GB FAT32 volume. If you successfully created a 'healthy' partition, eject your drive. You're done with the windows machine.

Now, plug in the drive on your Snow Leopard machine. If you created the volume successfully earlier, you'll see a 30GB large external drive mounted! This we can work with the drive without Snow Leopard throwing a fit.

Launch Disk Utility. Select the drive itself (the top level, not the indented drive.) Now, format as Mac OS X Extended Journaled. And it works!

Good luck all. I hope that helps.

+Update: Nevermind. Ignore my post above. Not working.+

I was able to successfully transfer files to the 30GB FAT32 volume. BUT when I tried to erase, zero, and reformat all to Mac OS Extended Journaled, it didn't work anymore. Same POSIX error. This tells me one thing:

It's NOT a hardware error. It's Snow Leopard f-cking up. COME ON APPLE! PLEASE.

Current state: the drive constantly mounts and unmounts +quickly and repeatedly+ within Disk Utility, after trying to format with Disk Utility to Mac OS Extended Journaled. The drive doesn't show as ever mounting within Finder or on the Desktop. (Snow Leopard 10.6.2 + Addonics Ruby ExDrive case + Seagate 500GB HDD)

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Solution! (will erase entire disk and create a single partition volume)
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• Open Disk Utility and get info on the drive in question. The info screen will tell you WHAT DISK it is. e.g. disk3

• Open Terminal and type THIS (with substitutions)...

diskutil eraseVolume <format> <name> <disk3>

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SUBSTITUTION NOTES:
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- Replace <format> with the type of format you require. (see table below)

- Replace <name> with the name you want to use for the disk.

- Replace <disk3> with the info given to you in Disk Utility.
(Whatever you do don't erase the wrong disk. You probably can't erase the startup disk, so for EXTRA safety the only other drive that should be connected would be the one you intend to erase.)


-----
FORMAT.........USER VISIBLE NAME
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HFS+...........Mac OS Extended
JHFS+..........Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
HFSX............Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
JHFSX...........Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
MS-DOS......MS-DOS (FAT32)

- You can only format to NTFS spec. using W'doze. But that's not a problem for someone with VirtualBox now is it. 🙂

QUESTIONS ??? - Just make a reply. I WILL see it.

In addition to jonnix's solution, I was able to use fdisk in the Terminal to create a partition on the disk, and then Disk Utility was suddenly able to recognize and format the disk like normal. Of course, if you're already using Terminal, his solution is one step and mine is two, but in case his doesn't work for you, here's another option.

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1) Determine the identifier of the disk (e.g., "disk1") the same way as jonnix's solution above.

2) Open Terminal and type this command, substituting values within <>:

fdisk -a <format> /dev/<diskID>

Again, substitute the correct disk identifier for <diskID> and <format> as listed below. As an example:

fdisk -a dos /dev/disk1

3) Check that the partition was created:

fdisk -d /dev/<diskID>

The first line should have a bunch of random looking numbers. If it's all zeroes, then something went wrong.

4) Open Disk Utility and pray to <Deity> that you can format the disk now.

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Here are the available filesystem formats available to fdisk:

boothfs — 8Mb boot plus HFS+ root partition (default)
bootufs — 8Mb boot plus UFS root partition
hfs — Entire disk as one HFS+ partition
ufs — Entire disk as one UFS partition
dos — Entire disk as one DOS partition
raid — Entire disk as one 0xAC partition

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Hope this helps someone, but more so, hope Apple fixes this in 10.6.3.

I cannot seem to get either of the above to work, are there any more suggestions?
Is it possible the same problem was what corrupted the Ext HD in the first place?

This is a little beyond the annoying stage!

BTW to add to the list:
miniStack v3 (USB/FW800/400/eSATA)