Disk Utility Hangs When Creating a New Partition

Are you saying there is no "free space" indicated in the partition map you find by selecting the drive then clicking on the Partition tab?

It would help if you were a bit more specific about what you are doing and how you are doing it. System Profiler data isn't helpful.

Great. Now, when you say "hangs" do you mean it freezes or do you mean the barberpole progress bar is just going very slowly or even appears to stop? It can take quite some time because ** first must verify the state of the drive before making the new partition. On a slow machine such as yours this can take quite a while. How long have you waited (or been waiting?)

Ohh, and I notice nothing listed in the second pic. There's no size entry or volume name showing. Just the grayed format selection.

Message was edited by: Kappy

This may help you:

To resize the drive do the following:

1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.

2. Click on the Partition tab in the ** main window. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.

3. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space "free space area." Give the new volume a name, if you wish, select the format type from the dropdown menu, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.

You should now have a new volume on the drive.

Message was edited by: Kappy

I've seen it take 20-30 minutes on my Mac Pro which is probably 4-5 times faster than your G5, so in theory it could take a while.

Do you need that little partition? Could you just make one new partition that's the full capacity of the drive then start over? It might be faster.

Have you tried doing this first:

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After ** loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the ** status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If ** reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit ** and return to the installer. Now restart normally.

If ** reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

If there are no errors reported then try the routine I suggested rather than trying to expand the existing partition just try to Add a second partition as you have tried before.

If this still gets you nowhere, then I'm afraid you're left with having to repartition from scratch. You'll want to backup the existing files if you don't wish to lose them. I would then do this:

Drive Preparation

1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.

2. After ** loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in **'s status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the ** main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the ** main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

When the above is completed quit ** and return to the installer. Complete the OS X installation.