Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I have a Seagate 2TB ext HD. I tried to erase the "ext4" partition to a Mac partition. The operation stalls, and the drive can't be formatted or mounted.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
Try formating the entire drive again, If it will not work then try to repair it with this utiltiy.
I did try to format/partition to entire drive. Disk Utility would process about a quarter of it then hangs. The Seagate drive would then power down.
Hi Maurice
I just helped my son-in-law setup a Seagate for his new iMac so that he can share music, photo and doc's with Windows systems. His Seagate was orignally formatted NTFS for Windows so we had to first Erase the Seagate software off the Drive and then reformat it FAT-32.
I will ask you the same question that I asked him, "How are you going to use this Seagate Externnal Hard Drive"
1. Are you going to use it spicifically to backup your iMac?
2. Or are you going to want to use it to Share files between OS X and Windows computers?
If you are going to use your Seagate to backup your iMac, then it is best to not only Format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but also to reset the Partition Map Scheme to GUID Partition Table.
If however. you are going to use the drive with both Mac's and Windows machines like my son-in-law, then simply Erase it and change the format to FAT-32.
For more info and help, see > Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X
Dennis
The Seagate was originally setup for a Linux OS; Ubuntu. I tried to erase the partition to Mac OS Extended (Journal) and Guild. But it wouldn't work. I reformatted the drive, using my HP laptop, to a Fat32. My iMac then was able to use the drive. BUT, I notice it took a lifetime to copy 400Gig of data to it. The transfer rate is about 2MB per minute and less. The transfer rate using my HP laptop was 24MB per minute.
Is Seagate FreeAgent not compatable with Apple? I just want to use the drive only for Apple not crappy Windows.
Don't know why it would be so slow, I normally get around 28 or 29 MB/s with USB FAT-32 drives and my Earlier iMac?
While it is a bit inconvenient starting over, I would suggest re-partitioning/formatting it GUID/Mac OS as per Ken Stones article, then giving it a second shot.
I'll give it another try. If it doesn't work, I'll either user a different partition program or take the hard drive to Best Buy and have them format it. I should have bought a Western Digital drive instead. Never had a problem with them.
Partitioning External Hard Drive
