disk utilities frozen and can't close down

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disk utilities frozen and can't close down

i have an old iBook running OS9. i am trying to set it up with an external hard drive (3Tb) that i can use on a mac and pc. I plugged it into the ibook and it asked me to initialise it which i clicked on and it started to sort it out and then froze. I am now stuck with it in Disc Utility with it attempting to do something to the hard drive (that was 8 hrs ago and the hard drive is now disconnected). The on/off button is broken and i need to restart it but disk utility will not allow me to restart the computer. How can i get rid of Disk Utility and how can i get the hard drive formatted so that the mac and pc can read it.

Thanks for your help

archerphil

iBook, Mac OS 9.0.x

Posted on Dec 3, 2012 10:40 AM

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Answer 1

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bund

Level 3

809 points

Dec 5, 2012 4:53 AM in response to archerphil

If your iBook fails while formatting the drive, try to use your windows PC. The best option for the Drive Format of the external disk is MSDOS (FAT32)

Please upgrade your OS to Version 9.22

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Answer 2

archerphil Author

Level 1

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Dec 6, 2012 2:39 PM in response to bund

Thanks for the reply Bund. have a slight challenge upgrading as i can't switch the laptop off as the on/off switch is broken. The slight challenge i had was that i couldn't format it as FAT32 as the laptop wouldn't let me. Went to an Apple place and they formated the hard drive for me using the lastest version of Apple so hoping i can use it with both pc and ibook but if i can't, then i'll get all the info off the ibook using memory sticks and bin the laptop. we do have a G4 with a more uptodate apple version but once the secretary leaves in April, i think that one will go as well.

Thanks again.

Archerphil

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