How long to partition LaCie 500GB Drive

[dblplat]

Hi Everyone,

Just started partitioning my new LaCie 500GB External Drive using OS Leopard and am wondering how long the process usually lasts. My LaCie icon has disappeared from the desktop and my Disk Utility has been saying "Creating Partition Map" for about an hour.

Am I on the right track and need to wait, or is does this mean the Disk Utility is frozen, etc.

Thank you!

 

[angelwatt]

Probably a number of hours depending on the exact settings you used.

 

[MacDawg]

What kind of formatting /partition are you setting up?
My experiences have been extremely quick

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[-tWv-]

My experiences have also been very quick, it only took about 5 minutes or less to partition my 1TB WD External HD. What setup are you trying to create?

 

[old-wiz]

I have partitioned 3 500gb firewire 400 drives, and none took more than 5 minutes. However, since these were Mac formatted to begin with, that might explain why yours is taking longer - if it's FAT32?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

That's odd, normally the partitioning process takes less than 5 minutes, UNLESS you told Disk Utility to erase the disk with zeros. Assuming you didn't do this, I'd check your Console logs to get a better sense of what's happening. Sometimes, Console can reveal things that aren't immediately obvious.

 

[tokyoshawn]

LaCie drives have issues

I recently bought a LaCie 500Gb drive for my iMac. Unfortunately it has MAJOR issues mounting to the Mac OS. I have several other external drives (Iomega, Buffalo, IoData) which have never had any problems. This new LaCie drive NEVER mounts by itself, and it fact the only way to get it to show up in finder is to turn off the computer and disconnect ALL cables (incl. LAN, USB peripherals, etc) to make sure there is no residual power to the motherboard. Then after a few minutes, plug it all back in and turn it on - the drive will show up - BUT there is no guarantee how long it will stay mounted for. Updated software does not help. There are quite alot of forums taking about similar issues with mounting a LaCie disk - so this leads me to advise NEVER buy a LaCie external drive for your iMac.
This could be the issue why it is taking forever to partition your drive - it has probably unmounted mid-process!!