Rusty Razor Blade

Thank you. I was having this exact same problem (I still don’t understand why) and you fixed it.

Thanks for saving me some hair!

By Allen on Mar 20, 2008

Thanks– same here!

By Thomas on Apr 3, 2008

Thanks for the reminder, that Master Boot Record vs. GUID option is kind of hidden.

This was the second hit on Google for the error message and it was just what I needed.

By ejk on Apr 11, 2008

Thanks !!

By nico on Apr 14, 2008

I had similar problem…formating to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) a 750GB USB drive spiraled for an hour before I found this page.
I did the partition/GUID thing (after killing Disk Utility and crossing my fingers) and it seemed to work…did a Verify Disk twice and both times said “appears to be OK”. For those looking for (like I was) how long this stuff should take (since its a big drive and all); IT WORKS REALLY FAST WHEN IT WORKS! (i.e. seconds, not hours)

….ok, trying to copy a couple of >4GB files to the drive…seems to work…but Im really paranoid, so doing a “cmp” of the two files via Terminal….IT WORKED!! YEA!!

By bruce on May 3, 2008

thank you thank you thank you. the same problem was driving me crazy and this fixed it!

By nate on May 19, 2008

not working for me… grrr… well I have a iomega 250GO drive. i don’t know if this is has anything to do.
sucks…

By xavier on Jun 8, 2008

You’re a life saver! Thanks!

By roostr on Jun 8, 2008

Google search for the format error brought up this site, GUID fixed the issue. Much obliged!

By whoDean on Jul 17, 2008

Thanks, that worked for my 1TB Maxtor drive as well.

By Matthew Snodgrass on Jul 28, 2008

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!
what a relief

By bihe on Aug 3, 2008

OMFG Thanks a billion for this wonderful solution to an apparently very stupid problem.

I’ve been googling this problem for quite a while now and just stumbled upon this post when trying to format my new Lacie 1TB Desktop Drive as MacOS Extended with the same results and error message.

This must be the most pathetic problem with Leopard I’ve encountered to date and Apple have supposedly known about this problem with usb drives since early 2006 and for some reason choose to play dumb.

Both G-Tech and LaCie acknowledge this problem and suggest you use a MacOS X Bootdisk 10.4.6 or older or simply use a PC. Neither of them had any clue about this enlightened solution I found only here at rusty razor blade.

Thanks again.

By Johnny on Aug 4, 2008

Another happy person. I have TWO of these 1 TB WD drives and was pulling my hair out!

Thanks for the GREAT INFO!

By Ty Miles on Aug 20, 2008

Thank you so much, this worked for my Oyen Digital 1Tb External Drive too.

By Gareth Witte on Aug 22, 2008

Thank you! Thank you!

By ri stewart on Aug 26, 2008

This worked for my Western Digital 1TB external HD.

One question: does this mean it won’t be accessible from a PC?

By Milan on Aug 26, 2008

Wow – thanks a mill – I was struggling with my 1TB Seagate this afternoon and googled the error msg. Thanks for taking the time to put this online – I was convinced I would have to return the drive. All seems to be working fine now!

By Danny on Sep 1, 2008

OMG a million THANK YOUs!!! Same thing happened with my Fantom GForce 1TB MegaDisk and this GUID plan worked. THANKS AGAIN!!

By Nathan Teets on Sep 4, 2008

Thanks for this, resolved my issue

By Josh on Sep 11, 2008

Thanks a bunch! I just bought a Western Digital myBook 750Gb and had this error and this fixed it

By sam on Sep 15, 2008

I just bought a WD 1TB MyBook and was having the same problem. Google found your post @ #3. Working fine now.

Thanks

By Brandon on Sep 17, 2008

Thank you! Saved my bacon too.
Michael.

By Michael Robinson on Sep 18, 2008

Great advice and it worked. I have a 1.5TB Seagate Extreme. I am now a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HD. Next question is, how do I write over the remaining 330.1MB of data that hasn’t been deleted? I am showing 1.36TB for CAPACITY, 1.36TB AVAILABLE, and 330.1MB USED. How do I eliminate the remaining 330.1MB?

I know it’s minor in the scheme of a large hard drive, but if there is an solution out there that I have not tried I would be incredibly appreciative!

By ben on Sep 19, 2008

Many, many thanks! I had exactly the same issue.
I was going to return the disk to the shop, but did a quick google for “File system formatter failed” to make sure a wasn’t missing anything, which turned up this page. Kudo’s!

By Mark Hagers on Oct 1, 2008

Awesome, Jon. Let me know if you come up with anything good. I still haven’t figured it out.

By ben on Oct 3, 2008

Awesome.. worked first time once GUID option selected. I have Leopard and a Buffalo 1TB DriveStation. Was about to call Buffalo Tech Support.

Made my day!

By Matt on Oct 4, 2008

Thank you very much. Saved my day.

By Freyja on Oct 5, 2008

Thanks, saved me some time figuring it out. This came up top when I googled it, amazing.

By Alex Howard on Oct 14, 2008

Thanks a lot!!! The apple support in bangkok is limited. So your suggestion worked wonder!! Thanks for it!!

By Somnath on Oct 17, 2008

THANK YOU! This information saved the day!

By RV on Oct 20, 2008

Worked for me too, thanks! Jeez, it seems like Apple should fix this…

By Jay on Oct 21, 2008

Thanks! I wasted an entire day trying to fix this! You saved my day.

By Mike D on Oct 28, 2008

Dude, thanks for this great tip. Kept struggling for it for three days, then desperately decided to Google and your post fixed it in a few secs! =)

By Wouter Groenewold on Nov 2, 2008

Thanks! Same as everyone else, I struggled for a bit and then Google sent me here, and Shazam! Fixed!

By Dave C on Nov 4, 2008

You da man!

By Doug K on Nov 9, 2008

Top chap!

You just saved my drive from being thrown at the wall. It owes its continued life to you!

By Bigred on Nov 14, 2008

I will add to the long list of people saying THANK YOU! Totally solved my problem and saved my girlfriend from more of my grumblings.

By Juan on Nov 14, 2008

Adding to the list too… was wondering why I couldn’t format the drive. GUID sorted it out. Thanks.

By Matt on Nov 21, 2008

Thank you for posting this very vital info. You saved me a ton of work. I just wanted you to know it is appreciated!

By Cat N on Nov 26, 2008

Thanks! That saved my day!

By geohount on Nov 27, 2008

This was a great tip. I spent 10 annoyed minutes until I Googled the error I was getting and immediately got this page. Exactly what I needed!

By Ryan on Nov 28, 2008

Thanks so much! Same as Ryan!

By Rhythmson on Dec 1, 2008

thanks so much, the last thing I need at midnight is a another technical nightmare. so the bags under my eyes thank you!

By Sney on Dec 3, 2008

You sir.. are a wonderful man! I would have probably gone mildly apesh*t trying to figure this out if I hadn’t found this post!

By adrian on Dec 4, 2008

genius….would never have susssed this on my own. many thanks.
Hard Drive manufacturers and Apple take note…PUT THIS INFO ON INSTALL or sort OS ten out

By chipper on Dec 4, 2008

Thank you so much!! took me 3 hours before I found your post… now everything’s working great.

By Nick on Dec 4, 2008

Thanks for the saved time, I was about to return the damn drive. Agree with “Chipper”, genius!
MSB

By Mario on Dec 7, 2008

Great post! This was driving me nuts with my TB drive. So much for it just works :/

By nick on Dec 8, 2008

Thanks a lot! That was getting really frustrating!

By Tom on Dec 14, 2008

Thank you so much. Just brought back a 1tb WD USB drive and this post helped me format the disk. Thank you again.

By John Lenz on Dec 17, 2008

I just got my 1tb Lacie working – thanks!

By KRis on Dec 21, 2008

Hi,
I have an issue with a WD 1TB firewire HD. I can format it on my 10.4 system, but on my 10.5.5 it does not even show up in the finder window or on the desktop, so cannot get to it.
Can anyone help me with this?
Thanks.

By onno on Dec 21, 2008

Worked for me with my 1TB Fantom Green Drive. Thanks for the instructions, I probably wouldn’t have clicked on the “Options” button unless I was looking for a way to turn off MBR.

Hope this post stays here forever!

By Mark on Dec 23, 2008

Yes, Jon, did that too.
It does come up with USB though – just tried that yesterday.
However, I prefer firewire for video editing.

By onno on Dec 23, 2008

congrats – you are the #1 google hit for “File system formatter failed” and it works! Should have known, but I was just following along with the printed instructions… DRTFOM (don’t read the f@#kin outdated manual). Always check the google before getting the RMA.

By Rob on Dec 29, 2008

So glad I found this at the top of the google hits! It worked great and saved a ton of time.

By Wayne on Jan 1, 2009

I stumbled on to this thread ad said to myself, “You have got to be kidding. Mac users do not know how to Partition and Format a New Drive.”
I’m a new Mac user and recently bought the iMac 24″. Last week I bought a 1.5TB drive. Yesterday I installed it with no issues. The problem looks like it is with the “Erase” function. A New drive is already “blank”, there is nothing to erase because it is not formated. Maybe the Erase process is trying to find something to erase and the App hangs because there is nothing to erase. Anyway, with any “New” drive always uses the “Partition” option, not “Erase”.

By Jason Hawthorne on Jan 4, 2009

Thanks also for this. I wouldn’t have thought to switch to GUID otherwise.

By Malcolm on Jan 8, 2009

Thanks a million, I bought 2 of these and i thought i was in real trouble.

By huggs on Jan 13, 2009

Thanks! had the same problem, you helped me out!

By Alan on Jan 15, 2009

Thank you so much! Your solution also worked with a Packard Bell 1TB drive – it is ethernet capable, but only for Windows (also via Parallels ®) so I wanted to reformat it

By Roland on Jan 16, 2009

Worked perfectly. Thanks for the tip!

By Justin on Jan 17, 2009

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

By Greg on Jan 19, 2009

You’re so money, you don’t even know it

By David on Feb 9, 2009

Your original post is almost a year old and it’s still helping people. I like to think I’m pretty savvy, but I’d have never figured this one out on my own. A thousand thanks.

By Sam on Feb 15, 2009

Thank you so much. You just saved my day.

By homas on Feb 17, 2009

Same problem. The solution worked. Sure wish I’d looked here first. Apple Support was useless.

By Steven J. Brill on Feb 19, 2009

Thanks, I had the same problem too and this fixed it. Appreciate the post!

By Jill on Feb 19, 2009

HOLY SMOKES! Thanks so much. I was so frustrated, but that simple tip worked!!! wooo!

By Chris on Feb 22, 2009

Wow…I actually returned a MyBook that I thought was defective and I’m definitely not a noob. Got the replacement and had the same issue until I found this. Guess I should have checked first. Oops.

Thanks!

Joe

By Joe on Mar 11, 2009

THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS!!! That option is sooo sneaky hiding in there like that. Wouldn’t have been starting to format at this very moment had it not been for this post! Thanks again!

By chip on Mar 15, 2009

Thank you for posting this – saved me from snatching my head bald!

By Lois on Mar 19, 2009

My 1TB Western Digital drive wasn’t erasing but doing the one partition worked, thanks for giving me the idea!

By Lockie on Mar 29, 2009

Thanks so much for this! I was having a hell of a time figuring out why my new 1TB Hitachi drive wouldn’t format. This worked perfectly!

By Pete on Apr 1, 2009

Thanks a bunch!! Surprised Leopard defaulted to MBR with a USB drive on a PPC Mac…

Thanks again!

By Ed T. on Apr 1, 2009

Same problem with my WD essential book 1 TB which I bought for my new cheap multimediacentre WD TV. Did not work either om my iMac with PPC or my iBook with Intel. Noted some place in the thread that the problem is caused by Disk Utility trying to erase a disk without content and that in Mac world it is the same as it will not work as it is nothing to erase. Tried the partion-trick and it worked superb (and remembered that the first ting my intel IBook asked me about when plugging in the disk was that if I wanted to use the disk as time machine backup… In other words it would have worked if I accepted my iBooks offer).

By NN on Apr 3, 2009

thanks bro, worked on my hackintosh with a 750gb

By coppertop on May 13, 2009

Thank you. I totally appreciate the post.

By pablo on May 14, 2009

First:

Thank you for the post.

Second:

One doesn’t need to make multiple partitions.
Just make ONE!
With either a APM or GUID.
This works perfectly!

thanks again!

By Juri on Jun 10, 2009

Thanks – helped me out too. Couldn’t get my mac to see my 1TB Fantom drive or reformat it until I used Partition, set it to 1 partition then it made it in a few seconds.

I regret allowing it to set the drive to “All Zeros” last night which took 7 hours just to have an error at the end and doing nothing.

By David on Jun 19, 2009

Exact same problem, spent all day trying to fix it. Even zeroed out a whole 1 TB disk right out of the box (took 8 hours, just like guy above). This worked right away, thanks.

By Tommy on Jul 4, 2009

fdisk and wipe the default partition on the new drive away, then format via disk utility should do the trick.

By jojo on Jul 7, 2009

Thanks man. Your little post saved me hours of trouble on a brand new Seagate drive.

By Brent D on Jul 7, 2009

Exactly the hint I needed. Kudos.

By Terry on Jul 9, 2009

I have tried all of the things everyone above did but I am still getting the Resource Busy error when I try to partition. I have tried partitioning one and two. Both give an error. Any suggestions? It’s a 2TB and I’m on a MacBook Pro running 10.5.2

By Jennifer Berndt on Jul 12, 2009

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks!

You saved my day (and night)!

By George on Jul 14, 2009

Thanks very much. Has sorted my same problem with a Seagate Barracuda ST31000333AS.

Thanks

By Hugh on Jul 15, 2009

Freakin awesome. I hope this stays as the #1 google hit for this error. Easy fix.

By Jon on Jul 15, 2009

I cannot express how awesome you are mate. Spared me a lot of pain and suffering. You are a godsend.

By Sam on Jul 17, 2009

Absolutely brilliant! Thank you!

By Kathy on Aug 24, 2009

I have a problem i cant copy files to the external hard drive more than 2 gb why is that? CAN U HELP ME PLEASE?

By Leo on Sep 4, 2009

Awesome. Fixed. Thanks. Was about to cry due to failure of a 12+ hr erase.

By Daniel on Sep 21, 2009

thankyou, your advice worked perfectly!

By chris on Nov 19, 2009

Brilliant. I had spent an hour on this problem; the advice here fixed it in under a minute.

By Jonathan on Dec 22, 2009

Awesome, exact same problem and that work around worked perfectly!

By Peter V Cook on Jan 4, 2010

I love the internet for exactly this reason. Thanks.

By snoopfish on Jan 9, 2010

Brilliant advice. Have been thinking my 1tb hdd was experiencing hardware faults. Thankyou for the tip, even if it is an oldie.

By Adam on Feb 16, 2010

AHHH!! Finally, an answer! Thanks so much, great help indeed.

By JMac on Feb 25, 2010