I just purchased 2 Western Digital My Book Pro Edition 750GB Hard Drives. I hooked them both up to my Mac Pro, one to the standard Firewire 400, the other to Firewire 800. I have two MBP's so want to use each of them as a Time Machine Backup Drive. I ran into two problems though.
1. I was unable to share either hard drive. On each MBP Finder and Time Machine found a 2nd 1TB HD I have internally and am sharing but neither of these. I even went under sharing to set these up as shared drives. One different I noticed. If I right clicked on the Internal HD it had all the names mentioned that are sharing it. On the external drive it listed that it was shared but had no names mentioned or no place to select this.
2. I thought part of it may be that I need to format these two drives. I opened Disk Utility in OS 10.5.2 and chose to do this but ran into another problem. I can format each HD using MS-DOS (Fat) but it won't format in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended. It does the same with each hard drive so I know it's likely not a problem with one drive. The error that it gives while trying to format as Mac OS Extended is "Disk Erase Failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: File system formatter failed." When I format using MS-DOS (Fat) it formats the drive and at the top in Disk Utility lists the same of the drive '698.6 GB WD" and underneath for one drive lists disk4s1 and the other lists disk5s1. I tried to select disk4s1 when I did a format but then got an error msg also saying "Volume Erase Failed. Volume Erase failed with the error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
Am I leaving out a step or doing something wrong that's keeping me from formatting? Also, any reason I am unable to get these drives to share? In the past I had a WD My Book Pro 500GB on a Mac Mini with Leopard just after release and had no problem at all sharing it.
Formatting A WD My Book Home External Drive on Mac Os Leopard
HELLO. I HOPE THIS WILL WORK FOR YOU. IT WORKED (AS FAR I CAN SEE) FOR ME
1.- OPEN DISK UTILITY
2.- SELECT YOUR DRIVE ( MINE HAS THE TWO "WD" letters AN THE END OF ITS NAME)
3.- GO TO PARTITION, WRITE THE NAME YOU WANT, CHOOSE THE NUMBER OF PARTITIONS (I SUGGEST YOU TO TRY FIRST JUST ONE. LATER YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND)
4.- SELECT THE PARTITION YOU CREATED. GO TO OPTIONS (ON THE BOTTOM OF THE DIALOG WINDOW)
5.- (HERE IS THE FUC...G KEY OF THE PROBLEM) SELECT GUID PARTITION TABLE/OK
6.- APPLY
7.- YOU ARE DONE
IS UNBELIEVABLE THAT THE WD COMPANY DOES NOT GIVE US ENOUGH SUPPORT OR INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MATTER... I JUST WASTED ALL THE WEEKEND TRYING TO FIX WHAT I JUST DID FINALLY IN 5 MINUTES.
Thank you Clicerio. Your spot on about lack of support. My "My Book 1TB USB" came with the 4 step idiot pictures and that was it. Need this drive for Time Machine and have spent last hour cursing. You saved my evening.
In case someone else has my problem, this is what happened.
1. I purchased a WD My Book 1TB external hard drive, connected it to my MacBook Pro (no Leopard, no Time Machine), and attempted to back up everything on my laptop to it.
2. I brought my laptop to the Apple Store to get it restored. Apple upgraded my system to Leopard, and I found myself with a "new" computer.
3. Plugged in WD Passport to find that my applications were not backed up (unless I'm an idiot and couldn't find them!) Had to buy OfficeMac, iLife, etc. I dragged my documents, music, and photos from the external drive to my hardrive.
4. Attempted to use Time Machine with WD Passport. Got an error saying the drive needed to be formatted to Mac OS Extended (journaled). I opened Disk Utility, and noticed that my Passport showed up twice, the second line slightly indented. I selected the second, indented option and clicked "Erase" but received an error. I kept trying to hit erase, tried it using the first option, kept receiving errors. Tried to Verify and Repair and received errors.
5. Followed Clicerio's steps. Worked! Had to open Time Machine preferences, re-select the external hard drive, and it's backing up as I type! Thanks!
