Formatting iMac Ex H/D

[johnmacsea]

I have just bought a Maxtor One Touch 320G External Drive and before doing anything else I have to Format it. I have never had to format anything before so I`m hoping someone on the site can tell me how to go about this on my iMac 2 Ghz- OS is Tiger 10.4 thaank you,

John macsea

 

[mad jew]

Open up Disk Utility in the Utilities folder, select the disk and click the Erase tab. What'll you be using it for? There are three main formats, each with their own positives and benefits. If you're not going to be connecting it to a Windows machine, then format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

 

[awr]

thought i would chime in here, desperately looking for some help.

I just got a 750GB My book to connect w/ firewire 400 to my imac running leopard. Was trying to format the drive last night to Mac OSX Journal, and it went for about 11 or 12 hours, never saying it was complete. I finally quit out of disc utility, and now the drive will not mount. But when i connect it and open back up disc utility, on the left it shows the drive formatted an FAT 32, with what i guess is a partition underneath it, formatted as journaled. But neither the drive or the partition will mount. This drive will be used on my Imac only.

I am not sure where i went wrong, or if i just needed to gove it more time, but 12 hours didn't seem right to me. I have tried repairing the drive, erasing, all to get error messages.

Has anyone ever experienced this before? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[richard.mac]

awr it looks like as if disk util never finished formatting your mybook to Mac OS journaled because it hanged or crashed or something because the mybooks come pre formated at FAT32.

i would try rebooting and then formating to jounaled again. if this doesnt work boot into your Leopard install DVD, select your language and then select disk util from the utilies menu and format from there.

 

[awr]

thank you for the response, i will try that when i get home.

. . . richthomas, i ended up having to boot off my leopard dvd, worked like a charm . . . sometimes you get so flustered you forget the basics . . . thank you much for your help!

 

[johnmacsea]

Formatting

Hello All,
I have been able to format my new Maxtor 400F/W, USB2. and also to make the partitions I wanted with little trouble, mainly by going through D/U on the Computer, thanks to the advice you all provided. I am grateful to you all,

John

 

[mad jew]

Good work mate.