Formatting a drive in HFS (Mac OS Standard)?

Question

Formatting a drive in HFS (Mac OS Standard)?

I pulled my old Mac, an older G4, out of storage to attempt to install Ubuntu linux on it. There seems to be something wrong with the CD drive (DVDs mount, but CDs don't), so installing from the CD is out. I was going to go with the hard drive install method, but here's the (latest) problem I've run into... the docs ( https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/powerpc/boot-drive-files. html) tell me the drive I'm installing from has to be formatted HFS, not HFS+. It doesn't seem that I even have the option to format either of the 2 internal drives as Mac OS Standard, only HFS+. Disk Utility also gives me the option of formatting it as "UNIX File System", but unless I'm misunderstanding something, that's not going to help me.

Anyone have any thoughts? Are there any programs out there that'll format HFS for me?

G5 1.6MHz

G5 1.6MHz

Posted on Nov 17, 2006 9:43 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2006 11:26 AM in response to David Schneider

Hi, David -

Did that machine originally come with OS 9? If so, boot to an OS 9 Install CD of appropriate version, and use OS 9's Drive Setup to format the drive as HFS.

Note that if you need to be booted to that volume, you will need to install OS 9 onto it and boot using that - OSX can not use an HFS (Mac OS Standard) volume as a boot volume.

***

If you do not need to be booted to an HFS volume, and you just need one from which to run the installer, then if you happen to have a Zip drive in that machine you could format a Zip disk as HFS, place the installer on it, and run it from there.

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Answer 2

Nov 17, 2006 1:41 PM in response to Don Archibald

Thanks for the reply, Don. But I actually realized a much easier way to accomplish my goal. I was under the impression that what I was trying to install needed to be installed from a CD, not a DVD, but it dawned on me that that might not be the case. To be honest, I'm not sure why I even thought that in the first place... just not thinking, I guess. I re-burned the .iso as a DVD, and sure enough, that's working.

But again, thanks for the help!

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