so I'm trying to replace the hard drive in my MacBook Pro. I bought a 2.5 inch hard drive and a caddy to transfer the data with.
according to the internet, I had to "erase" it, first. which is fine. but every time I try to erase it, it says "file system formatter failed", and the disk isn't recognised by OSX (although it does appear in Disk Utility).
what can I do?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1), 13", 2.26GHZ, 8GB RAM, 160GB HDD
ok I can format it as an MS-DOS (FAT) disk, and it appears in finder and everything, but I still can't format it to any variation of the Mac OS Extended format...
Try again: Disk Utility...Erase...then select Format Extended Journaled...from the options box...select GUID partition.
When you look at it in DU, select the device (starts with the size in GB or TB, then some alphanumeric jibberish, left justified in the column). Choose Partition, and partition Mac OS Extended (journaled) and GUID partition table (may need to select that under Options... I forget). Name your partition (I'll assume you just want one), then press Apply. When DU has finished partitioning, another entry should appear indented a little below the device - with the name you gave your partition. You should be able to select this partition and then use Erase to erase the partition. Report back if this doesn't work.
I've had similar hijinks with some drives that come preformatted in NTFS/MBR scheme.
In the Partition tab, first erase ALL partitions. Zero, nada, zilch. Then check the GUID option in Options... and select a 1-Partition layout from the dropdown menu. Apply. The format is automatically chosen to Apple Extended (Journaled).
I tried formatting it on another Mac (an iMac running Leopard) and it worked! 🙂
...and it stopped working again. all attempts to erase or partition the drive on either mac result in a file system formatter failed error, although I can erase it to MS-DOS (FAT) format.
Not sure this has anything to do with the problem, but I'm curious: what brand enclosure and what brand disk to you have? Is your enclosure self-powered or bus-powered?
it's a WD Scorpio Blue drive in a cheap caddy I got from Amazon. I think it's bus-powered because it requires 2 USB slots - one for data and one for power.
unable to format external hard drive
