[BoulderDash]

I've just bought a Maxtor OneTouch 250GB FireWire & USB External Hard Drive. I started a "zero data" initialization 13 hours ago (11:30 PM CST) with OS X's Disk Utility.

How long is this supposed to take?

Aye caramba,
BD

[CIA]

With a 250GB drive it should take awhile, but 13hrs is a little excessive. I would say maybe 2 depending on the machine you are doing it on.

[BoulderDash]

Word up... 14.5 hours. Now I've got to decide if this is a plausible backup solution (based on the fact that Apple KnowledgeBase articles seem to have a B-I-G gripe with external FireWire devices and B&W G3's).

Hmm...

BD

[michael_on_mac]

That Maxtor is the one featuring a useless lengthy blue button, right? Nice enclosing, at least.

We had such a drive attached to PCs, but did not get more than 8 MB/s from an exteral SCSI-Raid to that drive. The operator had a nice time watching this

Good luck,
M.

PS: Next time initializing, can't you refrain from the surface scan? I believe it's useless anyway, all the modern drives have automatic error correction and remove bad sectors for themselves.