trying to initialise external HDD

[frob]

Hi, I'm using a Powerbook G4 running OS X 10.4.7.

Recently I bought an external hard drive: Seagate ST3320620AS 320G SATA II NCQ 16M 7200RPM.10. I put it inside a Ritmo 3.5'' case.

I just plugged it into my mac for the first time and received the message: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I clicked on Initialize to see what kind of options I had, but the drive in the disk manager the button that says "repair disk" is grayed out and I can't figure out what to do to make it readable. This kind of drive should be compatible with Macs shouldn't it?

Cheers,
-Bob

 

[lamina]

Hi Bob,

Welcome to the forums!

You should be able to format the disk using Disk Utility. The message you got was perfectly normal considering it's a new and unformatted drive.

Plug the drive in, open Disk Utility, click on the Erase tab, choose your format (keep it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you intend on using it on Macs only, if you plan on using it on Mac and Win/Linux/etc choose MS DOS (FAT), but keep in mind, FAT will only hold files up to 4gb in individual size).

Since it's a new drive, I'd even go the distance and choose security options and zero out the data, just to check the whole drive over for any errors. It may take a while, depending on the size of the disk.

Once that's done, your disk is ready to use. Enjoy!