reformatting mac hard drive for HFSJ or HFS+

Well, the basic answer is you open Disk Utility, select the disk, select the Erase tab, select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" (this is HFS+ Journaled) from the popup, and finally click the "Erase..." button.

When you installed OSX originally, you apparently selected Mac OS Extended case-sensitive, which is (as you've found out) a bad idea--there are certain very specific UNIX-based things it's useful for, but 99.9% will have no benefit and at least some drawbacks.

Now, the problem is that you can't reformat a disk without completely erasing whatever is on it first, and since you are (I assume) trying to install CS3 on your OSX partition, you can't reformat it without wiping it clean first.

So what you actually want to do is this: Make a backup of everything important. Then, find a bootable backup drive (say, firewire external) big enough to hold everything on your boot partition. Use Carbon Copy Cloner (or another app, if you have a preference) to clone your OSX partition to the 2nd drive, and test to make sure it's working. If so, boot the computer from it, open up Disk Utility, and reformat your original OSX partition as HFS+ journaled. Now fire up Carbon Copy Cloner again, and clone back to the newly reformatted, and now non-case-sensitive, drive.

Boot from it, and you should be good to install CS3. Hopefully.

And yes, I meant to make a second backup--since you're wiping your boot drive, you really should have at least an extra copy in case something goes horribly wrong. Better safe than sorry.

Hope that helped, and good luck.

I am having a similar issue. I recently had to restore my hard drive and it apparently restored as case-sensitive. Don't know why. I did not intend to choose that option, but its the most logical explanation.

Anyway, I am trying to backup my HD before I erase. I have formatted the backup disk as extended (journaled) several times. However, after I am finished copying, the disk shows as being case sensitive. I am using Super Duper (per MacWorld's reviews) as my restoration/backup program. Because of this, I am concerned that trying to transfer the contents of the backup to my main hard drive will again be case sensitive. This is counter-intuitive. If the HD is properly formatted, then it seems that the content should not change it. But I don't know how it is being changed since I am specifically using disk utility to erase the backup hd and format it as "extended (journaled)".

Any suggestions? Get a new HD? New computer (I was hoping to wait until the superdrive has Blu Ray capacity at a minimum)?

thanks for the help.

Alaskaattorney said:

I am having a similar issue. I recently had to restore my hard drive and it apparently restored as case-sensitive. Don't know why. I did not intend to choose that option, but its the most logical explanation.

Anyway, I am trying to backup my HD before I erase. I have formatted the backup disk as extended (journaled) several times. However, after I am finished copying, the disk shows as being case sensitive. I am using Super Duper (per MacWorld's reviews) as my restoration/backup program. Because of this, I am concerned that trying to transfer the contents of the backup to my main hard drive will again be case sensitive. This is counter-intuitive. If the HD is properly formatted, then it seems that the content should not change it. But I don't know how it is being changed since I am specifically using disk utility to erase the backup hd and format it as "extended (journaled)".

Any suggestions? Get a new HD? New computer (I was hoping to wait until the superdrive has Blu Ray capacity at a minimum)?

thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

I do not know, but just a suggestion. Try copying over the folders rather than have super duper back it up. I do not use it, but maybe it is copying somethig over that makes the drive look that way...

I don't know, just trying to give you some options...

Alaskaattorney said:

I am having a similar issue. I recently had to restore my hard drive and it apparently restored as case-sensitive. Don't know why. I did not intend to choose that option, but its the most logical explanation.

Anyway, I am trying to backup my HD before I erase. I have formatted the backup disk as extended (journaled) several times. However, after I am finished copying, the disk shows as being case sensitive. I am using Super Duper (per MacWorld's reviews) as my restoration/backup program. Because of this, I am concerned that trying to transfer the contents of the backup to my main hard drive will again be case sensitive. This is counter-intuitive. If the HD is properly formatted, then it seems that the content should not change it. But I don't know how it is being changed since I am specifically using disk utility to erase the backup hd and format it as "extended (journaled)".

Any suggestions? Get a new HD? New computer (I was hoping to wait until the superdrive has Blu Ray capacity at a minimum)?

thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

When you are using Super Duper, do you have it set to erase the disk first before cloning? This may be the problem as it may be erasing the backup drive to match the internal drive.

Use Disk Utility and reformat the backup drive first. Select the actual device name in the list, click on the partition tab, change "current scheme" to "1 Partition (which enables the options button), click options, select GUID (Intel) or Apple partition (PPC) scheme, click "ok, name the disk, click apply.

Then use Super Duper to make a new clone (do not use the erase option) and then check it after it is done.

I have the same problem here.

I've backed up my macbook using Time Machine, so what steps should i follow? Would I still need to clone the hard drive even though i've used TM?

Cheers