Error in reformatting hard drive

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Error in reformatting hard drive

I used this article "HT201909: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture" but I keep getting "Disk Encryption failed with the error: Couldn’t eject disk." with completion of step 9. What do I do? I am trying to reformat my Iomega external hard drive (which they discontinued so they are no help) to be used with my Mac. There is data on there, but I am fine erasing it. All I want is to be able to use my hard drive again.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Jan 14, 2015 4:23 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 14, 2015 5:42 PM in response to cweesta

I read that article and it is rather odd way of doing it.

As long as the disk shows up in disk utility, go to the tab marked partition.

Select a new partition scheme.. eg one partition, even if it already has one partition.

Select options on the bottom and change the partition type to GUID...

Change the format type on the right to Mac OS extended.. and type in a suitable name.

Then select apply..

Tell me what happens.

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Answer 2

cweesta Author

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Jan 14, 2015 6:51 PM in response to LaPastenague

This is what shows up:

I click on the Partition tab and

I'm not sure what you mean by change the partition, but I clicked the + (which is the only thing available to click) to make it divide into Iomega HDD and Iomega HDD 2, then clicked apply. It doesn't let me go farther than this, nothing in the work area is clickable except Revert. But if I click out like the other Iomega HDD (in gray on the left side) and go back to this screen, it isn't divided into 2 anymore.

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Answer 3

Jan 14, 2015 10:24 PM in response to cweesta

I am not sure which is faulty.. the disk utility in Yosemite.. or the IOMEGA drive. Something is not working correctly.

Do you have a friend with a Mac that is still running something prior to Yosemite.. because you need to try this on a decent OS.. !!

At least to know if Yosemite is the issue or the drive is indeed bad.

Or you can format and prepare the drive from terminal.

You have absolutely no space on the drive.. your screenshots are showing a freespace of 4KB.. this is well neigh impossible.. try deleting a few big files in Finder so you have some space for the disk to do do something.

Terminal commands to prepare a disk for use. These commands will not change much if at all between versions.. obviously you need to take care that you don't wipe the wrong thing but at least it should tell you something useful unlike the Yosemite version utility.

http://operating-systems.wonderhowto.com/how-to/erase-your-hard-drive-from-mac-o s-x-terminal-352639/

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