External HD Problem in Snow Leopard

Did the drive format OK for Mac with Disc Utility before SL or is it a new one? Whatever your answers please include make & model number for the drive. There may still be some manufacturers who have models only suitable for Windows - probably a drive firmware issue.

If an older drive you could check the manufacturer's website for a firmware update.

Neville

I have the same problem. In 10.5 I had I/O error, in 10.6 I have error about memory (like yours).
I tried three different external hard drives and none of them I am able to reformat. I tried all of the possible options: GUID or Apple Partition Map.....

Is it possible to use something different to reformat a drive? Anything except Disk Utility? Thanks!

Have you tried deleting the partition(s)?

Having the same problem with SL. Cannot erase and format drive. Disk Erase failed with the error:

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

Bug in SL or any solution? External drive is useless until I can format it.

I had my hard drive fail on Wednesday, took my Macbook to the Genius Bar and they replaced it. Got it back today with 10.6 on it and now my laptop will not read my external HD. It was working fine with 10.5, but now when I try and restore from Time machine and copy my music files to my laptop HD, it hangs after a few minutes and says I did not eject my equipment properly.

'The drive is a Seagate Barracuda, Model: ST3120022A, 120GB 7200RPM. I checked their website and haven't had any luck on finding firmware updates'

I just found out that a lot of seagate drives have had firmware issues recently. here is a link to see if your drive needs updating. It can only be updated via PC 😟

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931&NewLan g=en&Hilite=

click the link at the bottom 'Click here to use the serial number check utility.' and go from there.

To each of the posts in this thread: if you have tried all you know without success as several have you should feed your problems with as much detail as you can to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/(in the case of these compatibility/drive formatting issues).

At this address your concerns will be read by Apple techs. You are unlikely to get any direct feedback from Apple but they will use your feedback to try to rectify any SL problems they find in an update via Software Update. If they find it is in fact a firmware or other problem with the 3rd-party provider they often contact them and may even assist with provision of an update from the 3rd party. I can affirm that at least one of the issues I have communicated this way was dealt with in a Software Update which came within a few weeks.

It is important for all to remember that these discussion forums are for users to help each other as much as we can. Some, like myself, have some experience at troubleshooting but not much formal technical expertise, others also have formal technical expertise and can offer more help.

Neville

I am not sure if this will help but it's worth a try since I have not seen anyone post a solution. Try plugging this drive to:

PC
format the drive as MS-DOS not a quick format but the normal format in drive manager then plug it back to your mac and then reformat it again as mac os extended journaled

Mac
try connecting this drive to a leopard then format it as mac os extended journaled


if all else fails try to use disk utility in Snow leopard and do a zero out erase

Add me to the list with this problem.

The external drive I am trying to format is:

Mediasonic HUR1-SU2S2 Dual Bay RAID 3.5IN SATA HDD Enclosure USB 2.0 & eSATA Black

With two Western Digital WD10EADS

This does not seem to be a Seagate firmware issue.

same problem on 2 new Iomega UltraMax Pro 2TB eSATA 3Gbits/USB 2.0 units.

Does anyone know if there is a 3rd party partition utitlity other than iPartition. I would really like to get this drive working and tested (its brand new).

The iPartition demo looks nice, but its $50. Or if there is any other work around for this problem.

I had the same problem with an internal SATA 1TB Samsung HD103UJ that was working just fine as a backup for Time Machine in Leopard OS 10.5 but the second day after upgrading to Snow Leopard 10.6 the drive stopped initializing.
Trying to erase the drive and reformat using Disk Utility I receive an error prompt stating, "Disk Erase failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory".
I am unable to format the drive for use with my Mac. Seems to me Snow Leopard has caused something to go wrong.