Disk Utility Hangs during partition

[g808]

I'm trying to format an external hard drive. When I try to use Disk Utility to format and partition the drive it just hangs. There is no activity on the external disk.

I've tried formatting it on a Windows machine with NTFS first, which didn't help. When I plug the drive in via USB my MBP recognizes it. After formatting as FAT32 on a Windows machine my MBP can mount it. Disk Utility just hangs when trying to partition or erase it.

I've tried using a different hard drive with no luck.

Any ideas?

 

[banjomamo]

have you tried doing it without creating a partition? can you do a verify disk?

 

[g808]

How do you do it without creating a partition? I tried using the "erase" option in Disk Utility if that's what you mean, and it still just hangs.

"Verify Disk" is greyed out and is not an option. I figure this is becaues it's not in a format my Mac can read.

 

[Peace]

Boot to your install disk then use the disk utilities there.It should work.

 

[iBookG4user]

I've had this happen to me also, although I never did get it resolved, I think it is a power issue if it's a portable external hard drive. If you have an AC adapter for it, plug that into the external drive and then try formatting it.

 

[g808]

Thanks for the input, but I'm already using the power adapter.

 

[g808]

Tried a different enclosure and that solved my problem. Funny, the other enclosure could be used and my Mac would recognize and mount the drive. It just had issues when trying to format. Oh well, problem solved.