Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Disk Utility stuck around 50% when formatting SSD

K

kuramayoko10

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 8, 2011
8
0
I bought a SSD drive for my early MacbookPro 2011, since my old HDD was very slow and with crazy IO activity when idle.

I started the Internet Recovery Mode and opened the Disk Utility to format the SSD as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so that I could install MacOSX.

However the formatting process is stuck at around 50% and the estimated time just goes up. It is on a step where the drive name and information is gone: completely disappeared from Disk Utility.
The step is now called Partitioning.

I don't know if I should interrupt the process by closing the utility. It warns me that the drive may be unusable if I do so.

What should I do? It has been already more than 1 hour.
 
That process should complete in about 60 seconds tops. Sounds like it is hung and I would kill it.

What kind of trouble were you having before this? It sounds like maybe a bad drive cable that would impact both the old and the new drive perhaps.

You also might try to run the Apple Hardware Test to see if that finds anything.
 
I killed it and now it does not show up on Disk Utility anymore =/
It did not boot up the Apple Hardware Test.
 
The old HDD booted in ok.
I can plug the news SSD on a Windows machine, will I be able to format it from there? Another guy told me that I would have to do it from Linux.
 
Try plugging it into the Windows machine. Format it to FAT32, but not NTFS. Once done, plug back into the Mac, preferably through an external enclosure. Reformat it to MacOS HFS in Disk Utility thru the regular desktop version. That should get it back to being usable for Mac.

Then, I presume, continue with cloning your old drive to your new drive.
 
The windows did not recognize it.
The usb boot Debian that I had is not working either (not booting). I will try to download another one and try to solve this tomorrow.

The SSD is brand new, if nothing solves it, I will send it back.
 
Possible the SSD is DOA or screwed, but my experience with new SSD are that they are unformatted, as in unrecognizable to MacOS. I installed two last weekends for clients and both were Samsung 840 EVO, just like the ones I installed in my laptops, and they both had to be plugged into Windows machines to be formatted. I did that, then plugged back in to Mac, and no issues. I've seen/read/experienced similar issues with Crucial M500, Intel 5xx series, and Kingston V300. If this doesnt work, then by all means return/exchange.

I want to believe that Samsung did it this way/set it up this way to indirectly spite Apple.
 
Last edited:
I've plugged the SSD on Ubuntu and ran gParted.
I deleted all partitions and reformatted it to ext3. Everything was smooth and perfect.

When I plugged it back in my Mac, I went right on to Partition it as Mac OS Extended, and it did it! But by default the partition table is Master Boot Record which is for Windows installations =/

When I try to partition it as GUID-Table, it stops at a step with something like "waiting for the Volumes to appear". (My computer is on german right now and the german version is: Auf die Anzeige der Volumes warten.

I forgot to add on my first post that I am working on a Intel 530 Series SATA 6G SSD. Is this a bad series?
 
Good news.

I reformatted the SSD on Linux and did the GUID-Partition on the Mac. Everything went very smoothly (took just a couple seconds each process). Now it is installing OSX. Finally!!

Thanks for the support guys.
I think that one of the important messages on this topic is: use gParted on Linux first and then do the Partitioning on the Mac.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back