Two Big Hard Drive Problems

M

Mushrooshi

Registered
Ok, let me start out with the first problems:

After attempting to create a bootcamp configuration, I keep having the problem to where It will attempt to verify the disk.

After repeated doing "Fsck -fy", getting my mac OS X install disk and doing Disk Utility, it still has this problem.

It will claim the free space blocks are a wrong number, and it will "repair" it, but after doing it over and over, it seems to undo itself and it seems repairing won't do squat.

I heard from one source my hard drive is "just about ready to completely fail". I have already backed it up.

My second problem is I recently partitioned a hard drive with iPartition, and now it will connect to windows, but it won't connect to my mac. Why is that?

The drive does show up on iPartiton, Techtool, and Disk Studio, but it won't show up on Disk Utility, Terminal "Diskutil", and finder. In Disk Warrior, it shows up as "Unknown DIsk"

All partitions are Fat32. There are 4 total partitions.

It is connected via USB
 
After posting on several Mac communities, I have had no answer at all. This is really frustrating me.

I really would appreciate some help on this. I want my computer life to get back to normal ASAP.
 
fsck and other Mac disk utilities deal best with HFS+ and HFS.
And maybe UFS. Not FAT32.
Since you have everything of that external disk backed up, I woudl recommend reformatting and erasing it.
 
Thank you very much for the reply, it is greatly appreciated.

However, I didn't quite word things correctly.

My external drive is not backed up. I am not able to get an external or something to back it up to, and I am not able to get an internet backup either.

I think the reason why my external drive is not mounting is because of a corrupt partition. I just recently repartitioned it with iPartition, and there is a FAT32 partition that has no name. Is that a possible reason? And why is it I can mount it on windows but on Mac it will show up but not mount. Is it because of that? WHat are some tools for Mac or PC I can use to repartition it? There is no data on that partition (thank goodness), but I wish to not disturb my other partitions.

If I had a backup drive, I would try your suggestion.
 
If you have Windows installed, can you tell us what a Windows disk repair tool can do with that external disk?
 
If the partition is empty, you can reformat it to the desired file-system format. I guess you could the mac os x utility ffrom apple for that. You will not need to repartition to do so. An harddrive should be seen, even if one or more partitions are not formatted in a way the OS understands.

So use OS X or Windows Drive-manager to reformat the drive to e.g. NTFS, which also a mac should see. Even you know how, you can even do this with the linux tools in the terminal.


Good luck, Kees
 
Kees Buijs said:
If the partition is empty, you can reformat it to the desired file-system format. I guess you could the mac os x utility ffrom apple for that. You will not need to repartition to do so. An harddrive should be seen, even if one or more partitions are not formatted in a way the OS understands.

So use OS X or Windows Drive-manager to reformat the drive to e.g. NTFS, which also a mac should see. Even you know how, you can even do this with the linux tools in the terminal.


Good luck, Kees
Click to expand...

Well, the partition cannot be reformatted, I already tried to.
 
If you are ready to give up on the data on that external hard drive, here's how to get it reformatted, assuming you want to start from nothing.
Open your Disk Utility
Choose that hard drive from the list (not one of its volumes, but the hard drive info line)
Then click the Partition tab.
Choose a different Volume Scheme from the drop down list. Use the same number of partitions if you like. Click on each partition area, and name them if you like, and make sure each is showing as Mac OS Extended - 'journaled' is optional on an external drive.
Then click the Partition button. It will warn you that will lose all data on that drive, so click OK, if you are ready to do that. And, you WILL lose everything that's not backed up from that drive.
It will create new partitions in a few SECONDS, maybe 30 seconds. If the process takes several minutes, or stops with an error of some kind, then your hard drive needs to be replaced.
 
Well, I was at costco with my dad, and since my dad purchased my external drive at costco, it was a 160gb. The one we saw was 750gb, so it seems he wants to switch out the drives.
 
OK, that sounds like a good plan. Lots of folks purchase an external hard drive, and then replace the internal with a larger drive.
You will certainly have a lot more space with 750GB....

Were you able to erase your 160 following the directions in my post?
 
Not yet. I am worried about it not working right, and I don't have any external drives that are big enough for a full backup.

Also, are there any online backup services that will let me back up 100gb of info?
 
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