[Veltliner]

Partitioning the external hard drive.

I have been waiting for 30 minutes, and there is still the notice "creating partition map".

The blue bar is not moving. Nothing seems to be happening.

The symbol of the external hard drive has gone from the desk top, which is possibly quite normal.

The weird thing is, that nothing seems to be happening.

The drive does not seem to run (I could feel a slight vibration in this case).

[frdmfghtr]

Since you are trying to partition it, I would turn it off, restart Disk Utility, and see what happens. You can't lose any data on it at this point.

This will also tell you if it's actually operating, since you should hear (and possibly feel) it spin up.

[Veltliner]

Thanks! That was quick!

Shall I force quit disc utility first?

[Randman]

You shouldn't be partitioning unless you are a developer. Macs aren't PCs.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by Randman 

You shouldn't be partitioning unless you are a developer. Macs aren't PCs.

There are plenty of good reasons to partition.

[ghporter]

Perhaps he needs a partition he can use with a Mac and another that supports NTFS for Windows. I've done that. No sweat.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

There are plenty of good reasons to partition.

I wouldn't say that. There are good reasons you might partition, but they're relatively specialized and not that many.

[reader50]

If like most people, you have only one HD, partitioning allows you to have a 2nd bootable partition. If the primary partition gets scragged, you can boot immediately into the 2nd and finish your work, while a repair utility works on the 1st partition in the background. Assuming you were flexible enough to put your data on a 3rd partition anyway.

I wouldn't call that specialized, it is the more common condition for desktops, and applies to nearly every laptop. How many laptop owners should be expected to haul their Install disks around with them, just in case?

[Veltliner]

Why I partition: the iMac's hard drive is 250gb, the external hard drive is 500gb.

So I partition into two equally large segments. One is for a bootable image of the iMac's hard drive including the apps, the other half is for additional storage, so my main disc won't get too full.

Why didn't it work?

I tried to partition using the intel GUID partitioning format - from an PPC iMac.

This doesn't work.

I actually went to the G-tech service center, which is practically around the corner, and they partitioned the disc in about one minute - from an intel MacPro. When they tried it from a Dual G5 PowerMac, it didn't work. Same stalling.

So, even though you get the option to partition to GUID, you can only, with a PPC iMac, partition in the traditional, or older, apple mapping format.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by Randman 

You shouldn't be partitioning unless you are a developer. Macs aren't PCs.

Give it a rest. There must be a thousand threads here
where that topic has been debated ad nauseam. No
need to fire it up again every time someone asks a
specific partitioning question.

There are enough good reasons to partition a drive
-- internal or external -- that, kicking a dead horse
at every opportunity just seems highly unnecessary.

Those flames simply don't need any extra fanning.

[Gary M]

See if your drive is mounted. If it is, it will appear on your desktop. In that case, Control-click on it and select "Eject <whatever your disk name is>". Then try partitioning it. That seemed to work for me.

Good Luck.