Trying to format a drive for Time Machine

[sultanoflondon]

Hi all,

I have bought a WD My Book 2 TB to use as a second Time Machine drive on a rotation between my first (a WD Elements 1 TB) & this new one.

I'm trying to format the My Book to use for Time Machine but Disk Utility doesn't progress past the screenshot shown in the attachment.

Please help.

Thank you.

 

[Fishrrman]

Did the WD drive come with any "proprietary" (WD-installed) software on it?
Does it by chance have some kind of special partition for such software?
Is there a way to remove the WD software?

 

[sultanoflondon]

Did the WD drive come with any "proprietary" (WD-installed) software on it?
Does it by chance have some kind of special partition for such software?
Is there a way to remove the WD software?

Don't think it did. Even if it did, I don't know how that would stop it from me formatting the drive. I don't think it had any special partition.

Can't touch the drive now since it isn't mounting on to my desktop.

 

[DeltaMac]

Try Disk Utility again, while booted to your recovery partition. Disconnect any other external drives, so there's only the internal storage, and your new W-D device connected.
Give Disk Utility some time to complete the task. I know it should only take a few seconds, but get it started, then take a break for a few minutes. 15 or 20 minutes would be a long time, but patience might give you a good result.

 

[sultanoflondon]

Try Disk Utility again, while booted to your recovery partition. Disconnect any other external drives, so there's only the internal storage, and your new W-D device connected.
Give Disk Utility some time to complete the task. I know it should only take a few seconds, but get it started, then take a break for a few minutes. 15 or 20 minutes would be a long time, but patience might give you a good result.

Thank you for your reply Delta. I tried that & it didn't seem to work.

I booted the Mac & managed to get it to work. I can't remember exactly what I did, but I do remember erasing the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.