Can't RePartition or Erase 2nd HDD

[Sogni]

It started with not being able to format Zip disks on my FireWire drives via the Disk Utility in OSX, and I simply thought it was because I didn't have the Iomega Drivers isntalled... So I was doing it from OS9.

But now I found a perfectly sized drive to act as my backup boot drive (for Norton and whatever other utils which requier to unmount the current drive to run drive utilities on) as well as a "scratch disk" for Photoshop.

So, I go into Disk Utility again, specify the partitions I want, I click "OK" and it unmounts the drive and goes through the process of starting to partition it and imideatly stops (as if it's done) in half a second, but the partitions revert back to their original state.

I get the same thing if I try to Erase it.

Any ideas? I'm unsure of when this started as I never use Disk Utility normally, altho I do belive I used it once or twice in v. 10.1.2 to erase and reformat a CDRW...

 

[Sogni]

That is what I thought it might be for the Firewire Zip Drive,
but this is on an internal IDE hard drive.



 

[chemistry_geek]

Try formatting your hard drive the fashioned way. Expose it to a high intensity magnetic field! If you have access to a 400MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instrument, just place the drive about 7 inches away from the liquid nitrogen cooling chamber. All you need to do walk by it once and the drive will be wiped clean! Remember to remove your wallet, watch, and jewelry (in case it's diamagnetic) before going near the instrument. High intensity magnetic fields will erase credit cards, drivers license magnetic strips, etc... Also, do not bump or jar the instrument, doing so could cause the superconducting coils to suddenly increase in temperature and lose superconductivity for several hours. Also, you could go to an area hospital and look around the outside for the posted warnings for high intensity electromagnetic fields generated by the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment. MRI is the same as NMR except you place people inside the instrument instead of chemical concoctions, and MRI generates 3D images where NMR does not.

Enjoy!

 

[Sogni]

Well... it seems my problems where deeper than just the disk utility...

As you already know - my first problem was I couldn't format any drive - internal or external via the disk utility...

Then for some reason my computer had become unstable having kernel level crashes ever since installing two things, Iomegaware drives for my Zip Drive, and replaced the original 128mb ram chip with a 256 to even out my computer's RAM to 1Gig...

I forgot all about the RAM and blamed it on Iomegaware.

Eventually I had uninstalled Iomegaware AND removed the RAM... it got much better but _STILL_ crashed at kernel level.

So I repartitioned and formatted my drive (I had 2 partitions on 1 drive, I wanted to use it all in OSX now). Things where going well and I was working on my homework. I finish up for the day and decide to do someth.....CRASH!

ARGH!!!!

Reset....

OSX wouldn't boot and it started booted OS9 - what the hell? I quickly hit Reset and hold down option so I can select OSX... Mac and folder ? where flashing on screen never booting up... no... anything but that!

So I stick in my OS9 setup disk and get to the setup desktop, imideatly the computer asks me if I want to format the drive! HUH??? HELL NO!!!!

Remember that 4 Gig drive I was trying to format? Well, I was able to format it from there, installed OS9 in a stripped-down version along with Norton System Works to at least TRY and recover my homework and put it on another drive...

When I rebooted I kept hearing the original hard drive clicking, then booting from the 4 Gig drive - I hope that was just it not being able to read the system folder and not a hardware problem with it!

I finally am able to get all the updates for Norton System Works and put it to work, and Boy - did it ever find problems! It found and fixes thousands of them!

After a while the drive mounted and imideatly went searching for my homework - found it! Looks to be ok! Quickly send it off to another drive, then hooked up my firewire drive and made a 2nd backup of it.

And here I am... trying to figure out what to do... reformat my drive resetting all data to Zeros, reinstall again and hope that problem wont show up again?

Or am I now safe?

So far I've had the system up for about an hour and everything seems ok, no crashes no nothing...

And what the heck happened that made me go through all this in the first place???




 

[Sogni]

So... THIS is why I had the problem? I haven't had my drive blessed??? So, where do I go to do that? My Local Church? The Apple Store?
heh