Impossible to see UFS external HD

[Sebastiano]

i have a seagate 500gb and with disk utilities i divided it into 100mb MS-DOS partition and 400gb Unix File System; i got afterwards that this was an error, as soon as i did it i could see and write it with no problems, so i moved there some data (work data); then i opened parallel desktops, the Win partition was fine and i could see it, but when i come back to mac osx i couldn't see anymore my ufs partition.
disk utilities does not see it, from the terminal i tried to mount it with hdid /dev/disk4 (was my external hd), it starts doing something (i hear it from the noise of the external hd) but it does not appear anywhere and it remains stucked.
what i can do is to format it again (like HFS+ this time) but how am i gonna do it if i cannot have access to the disk??
and if it's possible i'd like to create a ntfs partition as well....
thanks
Seb

[trevor]

Quote: the Win partition was fine and i could see it, but when i come back to mac osx i couldn't see anymore my ufs partition.

In Disk Utility, select the drive mechanism. The drive mechanism usually has the name of the actual hard drive manufacturer, in your case I assume it will be Seagate. The drive mechanism is also shown left-justified in Disk Utility, unlike the partitions which are indented.

Once you have selected the drive mechanism, reformat the drive.

Trevor

[Sebastiano]

if i have the hd plugged in disk utility get stucked and does not open, i got just the screen with written searching for devices and it doesn't find anything at all.
if i open disk utilities and then plug in the hd then it's not reognized anywhere and i can see it just only from the terminal
do u think that i have to do everything with the terminal?
and..i apologize for the stupid question, in disk utility where can i find the drive mechanism??

[Sebastiano]

ok, done it with diskutil eraseDisk from terminal...thanks anyway!

[trevor]

I'm glad that you got it working. For the benefit of anyone else who reads this thread, however, I'll answer your last question:

Quote: Originally Posted by Sebastiano in disk utility where can i find the drive mechanism??

Do you see in the image above that there are two items that are left justified? One says "Fujitsu..."--that is the internal disk. Another says "Lacie..."--that is what is reported for external drives. So I should not have called it the mechanism, as apparently for external drives it reports the name recorded in the external drive case's firmware.

In any event, select the left-justified name, which refers to the drive mechanism for internal drives, and the name reported in firmware for external drives. Do not select any of the indented names.

Trevor