External USB Drive wont format in MAC

[mattonthemoon]

Hey there,

I am fairly new to MAC OSX, but very familiar with windows.

I recently purchased a 300GB drive, diskutility in mac will not format it, i get errors such as input\output, ect., no matter what i try to do, however, in windows via parallels, i can format the drive as fat32 and bring it back to the mac and use it perfectly fine, although i want it in a MAC format instead of FAT32.

What could be causing the HDD not to format in the MAC OS, but perfectly fine in Windows (via parallels)?

Anyone else have these issues?

Thanks.

 

[dpaanlka]

What drive is it exactly that you're trying to format with your Macintosh, and what format are you selecting? There are a lot of options there. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is best. Do you have any other programs running that might be using it? Any files on it that are open?

 

[mattonthemoon]

What drive is it exactly that you're trying to format with your Macintosh, and what format are you selecting? There are a lot of options there. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is best. Do you have any other programs running that might be using it? Any files on it that are open?

This is a maxtor 300GB external USB disk, i have tried all the different 'erasing' options, the only time i am able to format it though as i already stated is through windows through parallels, but i dont want to use it as a FAT32 Drive.

 

[plinden]

Can you try again and tell us the exact error messages being generated from Disk Utility? The more details we have, the better.

From your comment that you tried all the "erase" options it seems to me that you haven't been trying to format at all. Use the "partition" option to format the drive.

 

[dpaanlka]

Your screen looks just like this?