Hidden Seagate Preinstalled Software?

[John55455]

I just bought a new Seagate 1TB Backup+ external hard drive.

I immediately reformatted it from FAT32 to Mac OS Extended to erase all of the preinstalled crap.

After erasing/reformatting the drive I'm not confident that everything is gone. Although it's now empty when I look at the drive in finder...Disk Utility says that 663.9 MB of space are used even though I have nothing on it. And second even after reformatting the disk description still says "Seagate Backup + BK Media" leading me to believe that not everything was actually removed.

Is there some hidden read only partition? I just want a completely blank disk without any preinstalled crap.

Thanks.

 

[Intell]

Change the partition type to something else like APM or GUID then set it back to what you want like MBR or GUID. That will remove any hidden partitions and extra files.

 

[Macman45]

They do have a small hidden partition on some drives...As posted above switch back and then back again to where you want to be...That nukes the hidden garbage. Had the same thing on a WD "My Passport" drive. I bought the Windows version as it was £30 cheaper than the so called dedicated Mac / OSX drive...Then just formatted it twice.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just tinkering with the partition types may - or MAY NOT - remove the "protected parition" on a pre-assembled drive.

Sometimes these partitions are created in a way that makes them "UN-removable" with Disk Utility. They appear as locked and even if Disk Utility sees them, it can't "touch" them.

I recall Sandisk putting something like this on their older USB flashdrives called "U3". No way to get it off by re-initializing the flash drive. At the time, the only way to remove it was to use the flashdrive on a PC and then run a special program installed in the U3 partition that would cause it to "uninstall itself". I actually had to take the flashdrive back where I bought it, connect it to a PC running Windows, and that removed it.

If you are unable to obliterate the special partition using Disk Utility, your only alternatives may be to
1. Take the drive to a PC running Windows and see if there is software on it to uninstall the protected partition, or
2. Poke around Seagate's website to see if they've posted a utility that can be run on the Mac to remove it.

 

[Intell]

Changing the partition type will remove it. Changing the partition type also remove Sandisk's U3 feature as well. That's how Mac users were instructed to remove that feature.