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Unable to format internal HD

adam9c1

adam9c1

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 2, 2012
1,893
315
Chicagoland
I am unable to format internal HD.

Using 10.11 installer I was able to repartition in two partitions but not format
I have tried to format using terminal and I don't remember what it did but it did not format.

When booted from 10.10 installer the option to create new volume is grayed out.
Any ideas?
 

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If it is a fusion drive you're going to have fun.

You'll probably need to break the fusion drive and then re-create it in order to format your drive for a clean install of OS X from an external HDD or 8GB flash drive.

That's what I did. Quick searches for "break fusion drive" and "create fusion drive" will give you many articles on how to manipulate the fusion drive using "diskutil corestorage" in the terminal. You'll also need to go over how to "install OS X installer to USB" in order to actually wipe the full drive. Don't worry about the recovery drive, it will be recreated when you install OS X.
 
It is a 500GB (7200?) factory.
I spoke with the previous user and he says he did not encrypt the drive.

I will remove the drive and install in a PC and attempt DBAN
 
adam9c1 said:
I am unable to format internal HD.

Using 10.11 installer I was able to repartition in two partitions but not format
I have tried to format using terminal and I don't remember what it did but it did not format.

When booted from 10.10 installer the option to create new volume is grayed out.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming here you want to wipe the entire drive and repartition?

Boot back to your installer then in the Utilities menu launch Terminal. Then enter the line below exactly like I have it with the quotes included. That will kill the logical volume you have there that is preventing you from formatting.

Code: 
diskutil cs delete "Macintosh HD"
 
Last night I tried to delete via terminal again and saw error unable to dismount or read or something..

I took the drive out, installed in PC and booted DBAN. It failed to mount the drive.
I then booted GPARTED which took longer than usual and was throwing some errors, but I was able to delete the partition table and recreate.

I then installed in Mac and repartitioned.
Need to get a utility to verify if drive has errors or not.
 
adam9c1 said:
Last night I tried to delete via terminal again and saw error unable to dismount or read or something..
I took the drive out, installed in PC and booted DBAN. It failed to mount the drive.
I then booted GPARTED which took longer than usual and was throwing some errors, but I was able to delete the partition table and recreate.
I then installed in Mac and repartitioned.
Need to get a utility to verify if drive has errors or not.
Click to expand...
I like Scannerz for testing drives. IMO, I do not think I would trust that drive.
 
^ ^
This - particularly about trusting the drive.
With a small 500GB drive - if you have questions about drive errors, replacing the drive would be a proactive choice.
 
A new hard drive of similar size will cost tens of dollars. An SSD that's a fraction of the size of your current drive will be tens of dollars but it may not be big enough for what you need. You've had errors using disk utility, you've had errors gparting the drive, and it sounds like you had errors with DBAN. In other words, you've had errors or problems with every utility you've used on the drive. If it was something more subtle or difficult to trace, then I'd recommend Scannerz as well, but in this case almost everything seems to be saying the drive already has problems.

If the drive is an OEM drive put in by Apple it's likely slow. Some of the newer HDDs (if you go that route) have throughputs with disk to system transfer rates approaching SATA I interface speeds, which, for an HDD, will seem like night and day compared to the original drive, and an SSD will be even faster (just costlier). The dead give away for a newer high speed HDD will be AF formatting and the specs should reveal a high disk to system transfer rate (don't confuse that with controller to system speed which will be nothing more than the SATA speed of the system/HDD controller buffer transfer rate).

If the system uses a 2.5" HDD, my favorite of the new breed of AF formatted drives is the Hitachi 7K500 drives (7200 RPM, 32MB buffer, and a media to system transfer rate approaching 1.4Gbits/sec. and 500GB in size) Here's a link:

http://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/TSZ7K500_ds_v3.pdf

I got one of them for about $45 a year or two ago.
 
I was able to wipe partition table using GPARTED, and then format in disk util.

I rare use GPARTED so don't know if those messages that showed up as it loaded were normal or not.

I have installed a used ssd I had. System loads too him screen in 14 seconds flat.
 
adam9c1 said:
I was able to wipe partition table using GPARTED, and then format in disk util.

I rare use GPARTED so don't know if those messages that showed up as it loaded were normal or not.

I have installed a used ssd I had. System loads too him screen in 14 seconds flat.
Click to expand...

Did you just give up on the hard drive? Did it have a problem?
 
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