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chasg · Mar 17, 2009, 11:48 AM

Hi All,

I've just taken delivery of a "Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Xtreme 3.5" External Hard Drive". I can't format it in anything but MS-DOS (FAT) format (I'm using Disk Utility, it's never failed me before!). I get an alert stating:

"Partition failed
Partition failed with the error:
File system formatter failed"

I've bought this drive for Time Machine (as the piece of cr*p Maxtor One Touch 1TB drive I got only 9 months ago is suffering from the click of death), and I'd like to format it as HFS.

Can anyone help?

Chas

anthology123 · Mar 17, 2009, 11:50 AM

Did you change the option from Master Boot Record to GUID?

chasg · Mar 17, 2009, 11:53 AM

Ok, what is it about posting a request for help that leads to the problem being solved _just after_ you've posted the query?

I'd erase my OP, but just in case somebody has the same problem, I'll post how I solved it here.

When partitioning the drive, I needed to click "Options" (bottom of the Partition tab in Disk Utility) and choose "GUID Partition Table". When I first clicked on this button, the "Master Boot Record" radio button was selected instead (probably because this drive came pre-formatted as a Windows drive). Once I chose "GUID", problem solved.

I'll just move on quietly now, hoping nobody noticed...

Chas

chasg · Mar 17, 2009, 11:53 AM

thanks for the reply anthology123 (you beat me to it! :-)

anthology123 · Mar 17, 2009, 01:38 PM

Wow, I didn't realized I just posted 2 minutes after your OP. No problem, I have to deal with that sort of thing everyday. Just glad you solve the problem yourself. In my business, the best problems are the ones that fix themselves.

chasg · Mar 17, 2009, 02:55 PM

LOL, I just figured you had some sort of bot running to enable you to post replies asap :-)

I'm not usually stumped by that sort of thing. Heck, I just pulled apart that dead Maxtor, which was two 500GB drives striped as RAID 0, popped the working one of the two into a spare external case and now it at least is earning its keep (the second of the two drives is now sitting in pieces, with my kids playing with it. Much better data destruction than any other method, imho!).

Funny thing about that new Seagate (the one I had trouble formatting): it'll only spin up when connected by USB, not by firewire or eSATA (hmm, another really easy fix that I'm just missing?).

Thanks again, and Cheers!

Chas