Level 1

3 points

Disk Utility won't allow Master Boot Record?

Hello all -

I just purchased a WD MyBook 3TB hard drive for storing our movies on. We had our previous external hard drive (250GB) plugged into our Sony Blu-Ray player and it worked smoothly. But now, I plug in our new hard drive, and the blu-ray player doesn't recognize it.

I tried re-formatting the hard drive as FAT32 (same as the old hard drive), but that didn't work.

The only noticeable thing I see is that the partition map scheme of the WD hard drive is "GUID Partition Table", and the old hard drive's map scheme is "Master Boot Record". I went into Options in the Partition page of Disk Utility to try to change the WD hard drive to Master Boot Record... but it won't let me. It's greyed out. It's there as an option, but apparently not for my hard drive.

What gives? How do I get around this? Thanks in advance for your help!

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 17, 2013 7:26 PM

Top-ranking reply

jesterpaul

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Nov 30, 2017 1:02 PM

On High Sierra it also needs the View menu in toolbar clicked and "Show all Devices" selected

View in context

28 replies

mandadex

Level 1

4 points

May 15, 2017 11:22 AM in response to Kappy

Im having the same problem. I want to format my USB (Kingston) to "master boot record", but you cannot change the scheme on El Capitain. there is no options, no volume . you can only select partition, but there is no option to change to master boot record. you cannot change it from scheme 'guid partition map'. you can name the partition, choose the format, thats it. on the left is a blue circle, it has a facility to change how much blue there is like a pie, but i don t know what this means.!! I want to use this USB for djing on pioneer cdjs. unless i do this apparently the usbs won t work on the pioneers. can you help. ?!!

Feb 19, 2013 3:17 PM in response to Kappy

Hi Kappy, Thx for your reply. I actually did that, but couldn't select MBR as it wasn't "active", only option was to choose GUID or Apple.... :-(

Feb 19, 2013 3:42 PM in response to mikegraff

Could also be the plain fact the Sony Blu Ray can not 'see' a HDD of that size ? you may need to partition it into more than one drive for the player to 'see' and mount the drive.

Custom mini.

Feb 19, 2013 3:54 PM in response to Kappy

Thx, I'll try that tomorrow, need some sleep now ;-) . Ill report back when I've tried the above.

Kindly

Jan

Feb 24, 2013 7:36 AM in response to mikegraff

How to partition and format a WD drive on Windows (8, 7, Vista, XP) and Mac OSX

Feb 24, 2013 1:13 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Thx Alberto, I actually did all the steps mentioned in your link, but still no luck- one thing I couldn't do, and will have to look further into, is to initialise the disks...I'll be back ;-)

mooblie

Level 4

1,954 points

Feb 24, 2013 1:37 PM in response to runnernorth

Are you actually selecting "1 partition" under Volume Scheme?

Feb 28, 2013 11:30 AM in response to mooblie

Hi, I've asked lacie, and they stated that once it was configured in RAID0 in OSX, then there is no return, and thats why it's not possible to make a RAID0 in windows... Bad luck :-(

Mar 1, 2013 8:15 AM in response to runnernorth

I can't believe it is not possible to use the disk with another file system.

Mar 1, 2013 3:18 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

I'll have a look at it Sunday, though I don't think it'll work (almost sure I've tried that) thx Alberto, have a nice weekend

:-)

Ictadam

Level 1

0 points

Feb 13, 2014 7:49 PM in response to mikegraff

Has anyone found a solution to this? I need MBR as well but cant select it

moulitsa

Level 1

8 points

Feb 15, 2014 1:56 PM in response to Ictadam

@Ictadam, the only solution I could find is use a different operating system. I formatted the hard drive at a linux box after all...

klausf11

Level 1

4 points

Nov 22, 2017 11:44 PM in response to mikegraff

My Solution: Go to the TOP BAR and click "View" right next to "Images" and then "show all..."

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Disk Utility won't allow Master Boot Record?