Need help Initializing External Drive Mac OS X
My Mac's Disk Utility wont recognize my WD 115 Gig external drive - I want to use the external as a backup to files on my Mac - below is the sequence of what I did while trying to get the Mac to read the drive
1. After connecting the drive to my Mac - USB directly into the computer - I powered up the Mac and got a dialogue box that said Initialize, Ignore or Eject - when I chose Initialize it opened the Mac's Disk Utility where you erase or partition the drive to be recognized - I tried to both erase and initialize the external - I erased the drive with no luck and then initialized the drive by selecting the drive from the sidebar and chose Partition (I saved it as a Mac Extended Journaled drive with 1 partiton) - but all I got was the spinning ball that would go on for as long as 15 minutes - After restart the Disk Utility recognized the external but it still didn't show on the desktop
2. I then booted up from my original Mac OS 9 CD and successfully initialized the drive - there were only two options for that - Mac Standard and Mac Extended - I chose extended - When I'm in boot up mode from the CD the external does show up on the desktop without any files on it so I assume that the computer does read the external - I opened the Drive Setup Utility and chose List of Drives where it lists the with Bus numbers - My Mac is is listed as Bus 2 while the external is 0 it also says the external is "not supported" - There was also a yellow sticky like note in the upper corner of the computer that said "Complete functionality of USB devices is not available from start up CD" so I feel there is something wrong there and initializing the external from the OS 9 CD did something bad - I'm currently trying to figure out if the jumper setting on the external is correct - there seems to be special instructions for the Mac in the WD drive literature - it recommends to set it as a slave configuration - also if the Bus setting is 0 does that mean it's not recognized or is not connected or is there a legitmate Bus setting of 0 - I don't know just a thought
3. When I restarted the Mac and opened up Disk Utility it takes a while to get started - it says gathering disk information - it finally loads about 7 minutes later but the only thing I get in the sidebar is my hard drive and no external - so it's not even showing up there anymore - so something happened when I initialized the external from the CD as it wont recognize it in the Disk Utility
Macintosh G4
CPU: 400 MHz
Mem: 576mb
Hard Drive: 19.1 G
Bus speed: 100MHz
8 years old
Mac OS X System 10.4.11
Western Digital internal drive in an external housing 115 Gig external drive
My Mac's Disk Utility wont recognize my WD 115 Gig external drive - I want to use the external as a backup to files on my Mac - below is the sequence of what I did while trying to get the Mac to read the drive
1. After connecting the drive to my Mac - USB directly into the computer - I powered up the Mac and got a dialogue box that said Initialize, Ignore or Eject - when I chose Initialize it opened the Mac's Disk Utility where you erase or partition the drive to be recognized - I tried to both erase and initialize the external - I erased the drive with no luck and then initialized the drive by selecting the drive from the sidebar and chose Partition (I saved it as a Mac Extended Journaled drive with 1 partiton) - but all I got was the spinning ball that would go on for as long as 15 minutes - After restart the Disk Utility recognized the external but it still didn't show on the desktop
2. I then booted up from my original Mac OS 9 CD and successfully initialized the drive - there were only two options for that - Mac Standard and Mac Extended - I chose extended - When I'm in boot up mode from the CD the external does show up on the desktop without any files on it so I assume that the computer does read the external - I opened the Drive Setup Utility and chose List of Drives where it lists the with Bus numbers - My Mac is is listed as Bus 2 while the external is 0 it also says the external is "not supported" - There was also a yellow sticky like note in the upper corner of the computer that said "Complete functionality of USB devices is not available from start up CD" so I feel there is something wrong there and initializing the external from the OS 9 CD did something bad - I'm currently trying to figure out if the jumper setting on the external is correct - there seems to be special instructions for the Mac in the WD drive literature - it recommends to set it as a slave configuration - also if the Bus setting is 0 does that mean it's not recognized or is not connected or is there a legitmate Bus setting of 0 - I don't know just a thought
3. When I restarted the Mac and opened up Disk Utility it takes a while to get started - it says gathering disk information - it finally loads about 7 minutes later but the only thing I get in the sidebar is my hard drive and no external - so it's not even showing up there anymore - so something happened when I initialized the external from the CD as it wont recognize it in the Disk Utility
Macintosh G4
CPU: 400 MHz
Mem: 576mb
Hard Drive: 19.1 G
Bus speed: 100MHz
8 years old
Mac OS X System 10.4.11
Western Digital internal drive in an external housing 115 Gig external drive
