Erasing external hard drive
 

I'm trying to erase one partition of a SimpleTech hard drive and use if for my time machine back up. I trashed all the files but the "get info" still shows the space taken up. I restarted and some of the space is recovered but not all. The partition is 160 GB and it shows 50 GB available. The finder shows an empty disk. What can I do to reclaim the space for use by TimeMachine?

I have a new iMac with 500GB drive but it replaces an old iMac with 80GB drive. Thus it will be a long time before I reach 160 GB and when I do I can erase the other partition of the 320GB external drive.

Thanks

Geoff

Use the Disk Utility to reformat the partition.

Did you empty the trash?

Thanks - more questions
 

Thanks, NovaScotion and gsahli,

I did empty the trash. Prior I had 3GB of the 160 to work with; after I had 50 GB available.

If I reformat, what do I loose? Will the other partition be safe? Can I change the size of the partitions? The other partition is storing a clone of my old 80GB iMac and about 20GB of photos. Thus I could get another 60GB for my time machine if I shrink it.

Thanks

Geoff

In Disk Utility's left-hand pane, you'll see all your mounted disks and under them their partitions which are the mounted volumes. If you select the volume (not a whole disk) you want to erase and click the Erase button on the button bar it will erase only that volume (partition) and nothing else.

OK. Did that. I erased asking a once over with 0s. It said it will take 2 hours so I went for supper. Came back and there's a message, "Volume erase failed. disk object invalid or unable to serialize." The disk icon was gone from the desk top. There was a "disk 1g3" on the disk utility screen to take the place of the "Time Machine" icon that was there. It's menu gave the option of mounting the disk but nothing happened. The icon was faded. I restarted the computer and now have only the one partition showing, no evidence of the partition I erased. How do I get the (hopefully) empty partition back?

Geoff

That result is not normal, so your HD's partition map may have been bunged up somehow already.

With which utility and under what OS was the SimpleTech drive originally partitioned? And were all its partitions HFS+, or were there any UFS/NFS/NTFS volumes present perhaps? [i seem to recall that UFS was possible in OSX before Spotlight came into being... but once established, it could not be individually reformatted (i.e., a full erase was needed).]

My guess would be —at this point —backup that disk elsewhere and start over. Meaning: it may need to be reinitialized with Disk Utility under OSX. All of which also assumes the disk itself is in good shape physically (i.e., not about to die).

At this point, as Hal says, the key issue is to get the good partition backed up on some other medium. Then and only then erase the entire disk and partition it again.

Thanks, Hal and Nova. This is a dejaveau back to a couple of months ago when I got the new iMac. I thought the old one (a G4) had a dead drive. When I transferred data to the new one I could not eject from the drive nor could I eject the mounted external partitions. After many hours on the forums and on the phone with Apple we found a finder pref that was the offender. I've often wondered what other corrupt files I might have transferred to the new iMac.

If I transfer the files on the "good" partition of the external drive to the new iMac is there a chance I will corrupt something? Can those files be isolated? Would it be OK if I just put them in a folder titled "Old Mac Stuff?"

Thanks for your help.

Geoff

The files on the "good" partition are isolated from the rest; OS X regards the partitions as separate volumes. If you are in doubt, then use the "Verify Disk" instruction in the Disk Utility. If it makes any corrections, do it again; sometimes one problem will mask another.

external hard drive
 

Hi Guys;

I'm having some real issues with my Mac since a couple days ago and here's the problem;

For whatever reason every time I open my disk utility program my external hard drive vanishes from the desktop. I decided a couple days ago to fiddle with the File Vault (don't know if this has anything to do with it thou).

But now everything on that drive is locking me out making it impossible for me to format it again...any suggestions for a newbie??

Thanks!!

straydogg10

Thanks. Will do.

Geoff

I expect that File Vault had a lot to do with it. What did you do?

It's OK now
 

Hal and Nova, I followed your suggestions. The "good" partition was fine on verification and I ran it on the "bad" partition and did repairs. Then I erased/reformated the entire disk. Now Time machine is running on it and all seems to be working well. My clone of the old Mac is in a folder on the new Mac.

Unless I run in to more problems in the next few days you have solved my problem.

Thanks much!!

Geoff

At some point (when you're ready to spend $100) Disk Warrior is a lifesaving investment. Many of us have had volumes that the Disk Utility couldn't fix recovered by Disk Warrior's complete rebuild of the volume's directory.

I've heard of Disk Warrior often but never really paid attention. I'm not a nerd and not even a high end user; just a little above entry level. I don't mean that negatively, just that my computer helps me to an end,is not an end in itself. I enjoy working with the computer but not to the point of letting it dominate my day. With that in mind, could i use Disk Warrior or would it be a complex task that I would quickly get frustrated with?

Again, thanks again for your help.

Geoff

DiskWarrior (one word) is not a nerd-only type of tool. It is a lifesaver for any user-level, when Disk Utility falls short as a repair application. It can also be used (sparingly) as a means to keep things running smoothly, by optimizing the directory/catalog structure.

Make it plus one for recommending DiskWarrior. It sounds like you have a history of hard drive problems. Running DiskWarrior once in a while is good preventive medicine. It's easy to do, pop in the disk, restart with the C key held down, and click a few buttons. It can take a while.

In addition, you may encounter problems by having a clone from an older computer on your startup disk.

First off, you might accidentally open a file from the clone instead of the more current file in your home directory. You can fix this by going to System Preferences: Spotlight: Privacy, clicking the plus button, and adding the folder containing the clone to the "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations" list. Now when you search for files, photos, or whatever you wont accidentally come up with something from your clone.

Secondly, you may want to pull fonts from the System and Library folders of your clone and then trash the System and Library folders. That will save a lot of space and avoid confusion in the long run. Before doing so, what are you keeping the clone for? Just as another backup of files and apps or do you plan on restoring it to another computer someday?

Again thanks. I'm getting a crash education and I appreciate it. To put my knowledge level in perspective I've put a short summary of my computer knowledge below. If you're interested, it will give you an idea of what you're trying to work with.

I'll get the clone off the spotlight search now. I rarely use spotlight but I suppose that makes it all the more likely I'll do something wrong.

Disk Warrior is on my list of wants.

Your comments on fonts are interesting. On the old Mac, every time I open Pages or Numbers 08 I would get a dialogue telling me to review a problem. The problem was that a font was missing. I ignored it.

As to why I kept the clone, I guess the best answer is fear, the "what if..." factor. I had trouble transferring data from the old to the new and left some behind. Nor have I transferred the entire clone. I left the apps and some old stuff that goes back to pre-Mac days. I'm not a pack rat with household goods etc. but I have trouble letting go of stuff from the computer.


I'm 65 years old, learned computers on a Mac Plus and knew most of what there was to know about Macs short of programing at the time, progressed through several Macs until changing to Windows in mid 90's to be more compatible with my work, hated it, returned to Mac about 6 years ago and found Mac much more complicated; no way I can learn most of what there is to know now. Also, I'm not into knowing every detail of everything I work with like I was 25 years ago. But I still like the Mac and still would like to work with it so it works for me.

Now you know how I, at 73, struggle along. It does come slowly but surely if you persist. I've had the years since I retired at 65 to learn something.

Ah ha, there's still hope for me, then.