Disk Ulity Hangs when erasing/partition

[P.Mc]

Hi,

I am attempting to reformat a Freecom 80Gb external disk to be MAC OS Extend format for use with Time Machine.

I have only just upgraded my MacBook (2GHz Intel dual core) to Mac OS 10.5.1. Prior to this upgrade the hard disk worked as a FAT32 disk and I performed manual backups and external storage without problem using Tiger.

I am useing Disk Utility to re-format, basically using the partition screen to make one partition. I selected the option for the partition table for intel Macs.

A few seconds after I hit apply I see the revolving ball and the Disk Utility becomes "Application Not Responding" I am unable to minimise it. I see the moving 'barber-pole' and the message "Creating partition map". I did a force quit after one hour, rebooted repeated the format and it is still running after 4 hours with the same symptoms! I will leave if for a while longer.

There is no activity light on the disk but it feels very much like it is spinning.

Is this expected behaviour, is the Disk Utility actually hanging or is it just taking it's time?

Many Thanks in Advance
Paul

 

[Soulwar]

Can you do a get info on the drive and see what format it is now?

 

[Mikuro]

Open Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities) and see if anything is using a lot of CPU time. That should help in diagnosing the problem.

I recently repartitioned my external drive, and it took about 10 minutes "creating partition map". I got a little worried, so I looked in Activity Monitor and saw that fsck (File System ChecK) was running. I assume this is because in Leopard, Disk Utility will repartition a disk without erasing it, so it makes a point to verify each volume before (and after?) resizing it, perhaps even moving files around if necessary.

4 hours does seem extreme, though.

 

[Satcomer]

4 hours does seem extreme, though.

Not if you are doing the 35-Pass Erase.