[AlphaQuam]

I'm trying to format a USB 2.0 drive that I used in Windows XP. When I plug it in, I get the dialog that tells me I can initialize or ignore it. I click initialize, and then I tell Disk Utility to intialize it, but it ends up hanging. The program itself doesn't freeze, but the progress bar never changes and the access light on the hard drive case stays on constantly. Then, I force quite Disk Utility and the access light remains on! I am stumped.

If I choose ignore and open Disk Utility manually, the drive is displayed, but it doesn't have a title. I run verify and repair, both complete successfully and they know the name I assigned the volume... but, it won't mount!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. DiskWarrior can see the drive to but won't allow me to do anything to it.

Thanks,
Jon

[bradoesch]

DiskWarrior won't be be able to do anything with it since it's not Mac formatted.
When you formatted it with XP, did you choose NTFS or FAT32? Nothing other than Windows NT (includes 2000 and XP) can officially read NTFS, so that might be why you can't format it on your Mac. Doesn't really make sense though. If you have access to that XP machine, you might try formatting the drive as FAT32 and seeing what happens when you plug it into your Mac.

[AlphaQuam]

Yeah, I considered doing that... but that would require me to have Partition Magic... which I don't. The drive won't mount in Windows XP anymore, either, although the "USB Mass Storage Device" is recognized. Windows doesn't have a freeware formatting tool... the only way to do that is to right-click on a drive that's already been mounted. Obviously that isn't much help in a situation like this.

Any other suggestions?

[bradoesch]

There's no need for partition magic. Formatting and partitioning in XP is different than with 9x. There is some sort of management program you run that lets you partition and format drives in XP, they don't need to be mounted. I can't remember the names of the programs. This used to be done with the DOS programs fdisk and format.

[AlphaQuam]

I got my hands on Partition Magic and reformatted the drive as FAT32. OS X can now read the drives! The type is listed as "Macintosh Exchange Format (MS DOS)" or something. Anyway, I thought now I'd finally be able to use Disk Utility to format the drive to Mac OS Extended. Nope! Same issue, the program just hangs there, and after force-quitting, the partition is no longer recognizable. Also, copying to the drive is iffy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it freezes the entire computer.

Could this possibly be a problem with the external case?

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by AlphaQuam:
Could this possibly be a problem with the external case?

That's what it's starting to look like. Some people claim OS X doesn't play well with FAT32 anytime. I'd pull the drive out of the case and install it internally and see if it works better that way (if you've got a Mac that has room for another internal drive.)

[AlphaQuam]

Originally posted by bradoesch:
That's what it's starting to look like. Some people claim OS X doesn't play well with FAT32 anytime. I'd pull the drive out of the case and install it internally and see if it works better that way (if you've got a Mac that has room for another internal drive.)

I wish I could do that. The Athlon box it was in before is fried completely and the G5 only accepts SATA... so... I may just try another enclosure. But, at the same time, the enclosure works perfect with both my Wintel laptops. I think I'll just suck it up and deal with USB 1.1 for now and then sell the drives.

[AlphaQuam]

I just wanted to post that Panther fixed all the problems. I plugged in the USB 2.0 drive, opened Disk Utility, formatted, and voila it worked like a charm!