Help with External HD/imac please!

[irw1]

Hello folks,

Just wondered if anyone here can help me with a small problem with a friend's external hard drive please?

He wanted to wipe it, and apparently erased the data - I assume using disk utility, but now can't access it...

I've just plugged it into my imac, and get the message "The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer". I can then choose "Initialize, Ignore or Eject".

Not having had my imac that long, :baby: and not wanting to screw up his drive, (if he's not already managed that, ) what's the best move from here, (Initialize I guess, but then what?!) and will this be easy enough to sort out so he can use it again?

It's an Iomega 250GB btw, and OSX 10.5.7

Any guidance very much appreciated!

 

[Biggz]

I know you said you're using a mac but is your friend using windows? If he is he might have deleted the partition on the hard drive somehow.

I'm not sure how you would do this on a mac but on windows...

Connect the drive and power it on.
Right click "My Computer" (or Computer, on vista/win7) and select Manage
Select Storage->Disk Management.
This should give you a list of drives connected, if this external drive shows up in here and not My computer , right click and select "New Simple Volume" give it the max size and let it format as ntfs (or whatever else you prefer)

I'd expect you'd get an "initialize" error on a mac if the drive wasn't partitioned. You could most likely just initialise it and give him it back.

 

[irw1]

Biggz,

Thank you for taking the time to try and help! We're both using macs - he's got a macmini I think - but knows even less about computers generally than me - which can only be dangerous! :bonk:

I think you might be right in that the drive doesn't seem to have any partition atm. When I try to create one with the mac's disk utility, it fails and says there has been an Input/Output error. :shrug: At which point I'm lost!

Ian

 

[Paulmack]

You need to go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and format the drive there to Mac OSX Journalled. That should get it sorted for you. If not then use the partition tab to repartition it how you wish

 

[irw1]

^^^ Paul, thanks for your help, and sorry for my late reply.

Disk Utility gets to the point where I am about to create a partition, but then stops 5 seconds later with the Input/Output error. It is set to Mac OSX Journalled.

I have read somewhere that OSX 10.5.7 can have issues with formatting external drives sometimes. :shrug: So I updated to 10.5.8, but still get the same problem. Apparently, using firewire rather than USB might solve it, but atm I don't have the right lead to try it.

Can anyone confirm if they've heard of this before, or suggest another solution that might fix this problem?

 

[Chappers]

IF disk Utility will see the drive.try running "Repair". Although I'm not sure that this will accomplish anything, however you've nothing to lose. Then try to partition. Try selecting 2 partitions, rather than one and see if this makes any difference. If it works you can always go back and set it to one.in the partition menu you'll see an options button, click on it you'll now see 3 radio buttons, choose the middle one and see if that makes a difference

If this fails try erasing the disk and and repeat the above .

If that fails it maybe a drive problem, possibly the controller not being to access the disk .

Finally if the disk is under warranty I'd return it.

 

[irw1]

Chappers - thank you very much for the advice. I will give that a go when I get home this evening.

Cheers,

Ian

 

[cowasaki]

Ian,

Just had a look at the replies and it covers it really

If a format does not work (and as stated by PaulMack OSX Journalled is the way to go but make sure you DO NOT use case sensitive or CS will not work!) then no other Mac disk utils are going to touch it! In disk util go to the section that selects the number of partitions and change this to another number then reformat (this can sometimes help!) then reformat it back again. If none of this works stick the drive on a Windows machine and reformat it to FAT32 (FAT32 will handle gigabyte drives BUT windows has an artificial limit added to make people switch to newer formats - If you use a third party formatting utility you can format larger).

If EVERYTHING FAILS let me know and if we cannot sort it you could pop it in the post

 

[irw1]

Ian,

Just had a look at the replies and it covers it really

If a format does not work (and as stated by PaulMack OSX Journalled is the way to go but make sure you DO NOT use case sensitive or CS will not work!) then no other Mac disk utils are going to touch it! In disk util go to the section that selects the number of partitions and change this to another number then reformat (this can sometimes help!) then reformat it back again. If none of this works stick the drive on a Windows machine and reformat it to FAT32 (FAT32 will handle gigabyte drives BUT windows has an artificial limit added to make people switch to newer formats - If you use a third party formatting utility you can format larger).

If EVERYTHING FAILS let me know and if we cannot sort it you could pop it in the post

Darren, you're an absolute legend mate, thanks for taking the time to reply and for kindly offering to take a look if I get really stuck. I will update this thread this evening when I've had a chance to look at it again.

Cheers to everyone who's offered help, it's much appreciated.

 

[irw1]

Quick update:



Still getting the Input/Output error when trying to partition it on my imac. I'll try it on a windows machine tomorrow and see how it behaves...

Thanks for all the help and PM's