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Reformatting Internal Drive Enclosure Issue

R

RHatton

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 30, 2009
213
0
Louisville, KY
Hi all,

I am reformatting an internal hard drive in an enclosure to use as a media storage drive. I attempted to reformat the drive and partition it as a Mac OS X Extended however it will not erase the current volume and reformat. The volume on there currently is literally the HD with the old OS and Files and such on it, so am I missing a step in the reformatting process? Do I need to reformat as Free Space or FAT or what? Any help you all can offer is appreciated. Thanks guys

Ryan
 
Two things come to mind: first, you accidentally booted off of the external or, second, you are selecting your internal (boot) volume [in Disk Utility]. In either case, it won't let you erase or re-partition it since it's the boot volume.
 
The new hard drive is already installed however the internal drive in the enclosure will not allow to reformat. I'm booting from the internal drive inside the macbook and plugging in the enclosure and it won't allow me to reformat it. I thought it rather odd. Could it be because the current internal drive and the old drive in the enclosure are named the same, "Macintosh HD"?
 
RHatton said:
The new hard drive is already installed however the internal drive in the enclosure will not allow to reformat. I'm booting from the internal drive inside the macbook and plugging in the enclosure and it won't allow me to reformat it. I thought it rather odd. Could it be because the current internal drive and the old drive in the enclosure are named the same, "Macintosh HD"?
Click to expand...

BlueRevolution said:
It won't do it? Are you getting an error message, or is the button disabled... what exactly is happening?
Click to expand...

You still haven't answered the question.
 
I attempted it but it still says unable to mount disk. I am booting from the internal drive not the enclosure so it wouldn't make sense for it to not be able to mount it. Any other suggestions? Thanks everyone for all your help so far.

I plug in the external drive, open disk utility, select the drive and choose to create 1 partition that is Mac OS X Extended and then choose to erase the current data and replace it with the partition, it says unable to mount disk.
 
RHatton said:
I attempted it but it still says unable to mount disk. I am booting from the internal drive not the enclosure so it wouldn't make sense for it to not be able to mount it. Any other suggestions? Thanks everyone for all your help so far.

I plug in the external drive, open disk utility, select the drive and choose to create 1 partition that is Mac OS X Extended and then choose to erase the current data and replace it with the partition, it says unable to mount disk.
Click to expand...

In Disk Utility, click on the Volume in the sidebar that you want to erase (this should be a disk that begins with its size, and then manufacture)

Now on the right click on Partition. Then, under Volume Scheme: choose 1 Partition. Then below that, click Options...

Now choose GUID. Click Okay, then Apply.
 
GUID was selected when I attempted to partition however it still will not partition. I'm not sure what the problem is.
 
RHatton said:
GUID was selected when I attempted to partition however it still will not partition. I'm not sure what the problem is.
Click to expand...

Just to confirm... With Disk Utility open, unplug the external drive, and make sure that the drive you've been looking at does go away in Disk Utility.
 
No not yet, I will. I still find it odd that the drive will not mount. The drive is accessible from finder and I can access all the files on it.
 
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