Reformating/Reinitializing Hard Drive?

[jb_lyndon]

"OSX 10.2 install CD's Disk Utility is able to see the internal hard drive, listing it by its brand name and capacity, but is not able to see the logical volume "Macintosh HD" where the software and data are stored. This seems to indicate that the hard drive is sound and properly connected physically, but that the volume has become lost or corrupted."
Since Disk First Aid and Disk Warrior cannot see the volume, and so cannot repair it, and since I've done a recent backup I'm thinking of reformatting the hard drive and starting fresh...

What I'm wondering is, since previously I've clean installed OSX to the now missing "Macintosh HD", will reformatting/reinitializing the "55.90 GB Maxtor" with OSX install CD's Disk Utility change it's name to "Macintosh HD" or will it create a new volume "Macintosh HD" on it (within it) to install OSX (&OS9)??

Again I'm not worried about data recovery as I've recently backed up and clean installed OSX. I just want to start clean and am hesitant as I don't know if I may run into or cause more trouble.

please Help?

 

[yellow]

Doing a zero-all sector reformatting on an IDE/ATA drive is as close to the SCSI low-level format as you can get. It should be in the Options of the Erase tab in Disk Utility. This will check all sectors and map out any bad blocks. I don't remember what it will rename the drive as, most likely "Untitled" is the default, but that makes no difference since it's easily changeable. One thing to note is that this doesn't mean that your hard drive will perform perfectly, it's quite possible that the hardware of the disk is FUBAR'd. As always, back up often to minimize the data loss, but it sounds like you're on top of that. I'd say that if the drive goes belly-up in the next few months, you should consider replacing it.

 

[jb_lyndon]

I went ahead and attempted to reformat the HD, but now OSX Disk Utility seems to be stuck on the "Setting up partition map" window w/ the moving 'candy stripe' bar.
It's been there for nearly an hour so I'm assuming something's wrong. How long does "Setting up partition map" usually take (60GB HD)??

Now I'm scared to force shutdown, so I'm just impatiently waiting.
What should I do?

 

[yellow]

In OS 9, zeroing all data on an IDE/ATA drive took a mind bogglingly long time. It's faster in OS X, but I'd let it go for a few hours (depending on the speed of your CPU) before I decided to force-quit the utility. At this point it should be attempting to map out all the bad blocks, there may be a lot.

 

[jb_lyndon]

I don't know about the "zero-all sector reformatting" as I'm reformatting from the OSX 10.2 install CD and there was no option like that in Disk Utility. However the "Setting up partition map" window is still there after an hour.
Should I continue to wait it out??

Oh and the eMac came with software restore CDs that install OS 9.2.2 and apparently are unbootable. However I do have an old OS 9.1 bootable CD.
Can I use it to boot my eMac and reformat the HD safely? Then install OS X and OS 9.2.2?

 

[yellow]

Sounds like you're doing a re-initialization, rather then a reformat. As I mentioned earlier in the post, zero-all data (reformat) is found in the Options of the Erase tab in the Disk Utility. If you select the Disk rather then the given disk name as the source that you're erasing, you will see the Options button become available. IMO, a simple re-initialization should not take this long. You pretty much have no recourse except to force quit/power off the machine. Sadly all you can do is try and reformat the disk again. Chances are that the disk is toast though.