Disk Utility Stalls On Erase

Hi Everyone!
I've got a situation with Disk utility I'm hoping someone with more experience can guide me through. I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.2 ghz Core2Duo & 10.6.8

I have four SATA hard disks. Three are from old Windows 98 machines which are long gone. One's from a MS-DOS machine. I'd like to use them with OS X. Why? Just to learn how, I guess. They aren't huge.

I've got a USB to SATA converter cable. When I connect the devices, after two or three minutes, I get a dialog box allowing me to 'Ignore, Eject or Initialize' the disk. It reports the disk is not readable by this computer.

Finder does not see them, but Disk Utility does. A check of the hidden 'Volumes' folder does not find them either. Disk Utility only offers me the option of Erasing or partitioning. I don't care about the existing data (I backed them up long ago). Clicking either Erase or Partition starts the process. For either, at about 75% of the progress bar, the program freezes and the time counter grows from 1 minute, two minutes, etc. I can leave it for many hours & the bar stays put.

After a while, the drive will spin down. If I stop & re-start DU, the drive will spin up. If I ask for Erase, DU will quickly return to where it left off, but no further progress is made.

Disk utility can read the disk model number, serial number, size, USB connection & write status, so I'm guessing the disks are readable. The only mistake DU makes is that one of them is a dinky 40mb drive & DU reports it as 4tb. That would be cool. But it reads the model number OK.

So far, I've tried different methods, such as -Start OS X, Then plug in the disk. Plug in the disk, Then start OS X. I've tried booting to the installation disk & running Disk Utility from there. I tried FAT, Journaled, Extended Journaled. Master or Slave or Cable Select. No luck. Same results.


I googled my brains out on this one, trying all I found. Have any of you experienced this situation? I sure appreciate your help & ideas.

Paul

PS: The Drives Are-
Western Digital 2540 (540mb Form a 486 machine)
Western Digital 32500 (2.5gb From a 6x86 machine)
NEC D3717 (540mb From a 486 machine)
Seagate ST35 I A/X (40mb From a 486 DOS machine)

I have four SATA hard disks. Three are from old Windows 98 machines which are long gone. One's from a MS-DOS machine. I'd like to use them with OS X. Why? Just to learn how, I guess. They aren't huge.

I've got a USB to SATA converter cable. When I connect the devices, after two or three minutes, I get a dialog box allowing me to 'Ignore, Eject or Initialize' the disk. It reports the disk is not readable by this computer.

Click to expand...

Are you sure those drives are SATA? I suspect they're ATA not SATA. Or is your terminology backwards....

PS: The Drives Are-
Western Digital 2540 (540mb Form a 486 machine)
Western Digital 32500 (2.5gb From a 6x86 machine)
NEC D3717 (540mb From a 486 machine)
Seagate ST35 I A/X (40mb From a 486 DOS machine)

Click to expand...

The Seagate drive is ATA for sure. I have one exactly like it and it's ATA. The other drives all appear to be older ATA drives. Could be the reason the drives are not readable.

Probably a Firewire connected external case to suit ATA drives would be the go. MacBook 3.1 has both 400 and 800 connectors.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000B3ALF/?tag=macforums0e4-20


Note three used from $25 each is good buying.

Thank you Chscag for replying.
To be honest, I've forgotten more than I knew about system interfaces- And that was not a whole lot.

I looked on the original receipt from when I bought one of the computers & it sated SATA hard drive. But, who knows if that's right.

Then, I went to Western Digital's site & looked up one of the WD drives. It says "40 Pin EIDE". Next, I looked at the USB-HD adapter I have. It has two ends. One says IDE (For CD I guess) & the end that fits the drives says SATA.

Next, I looked at the motherboard one of them came off & the controller card another was on. No clues there. Then, I looked at the manual for that motherboard. All it says it IDE 1 & IDE 2 for the slots.

I couldn't find information about the NEC yet & you already confirmed the Seagate is ATA.

Does any of that help figure out which type they are? How do I tell the difference?

Also, if they are all ATA, like the Seagate is, is there a way to get at them with the USB adapter? I tried in Windows XP & 98SE. But via VirtualBox is the only way I can access Windows. XP sees each one in Device Manager, but not in Disk management or Explorer, so there's no formatting them from Windows. DOS won't see the USB.

I sure appreciate you help (and the education!)
Paul

Thank you Harryb2448
I just saw your reply & the link to the firewire enclosures.
If they all turn out to be ATA, that sounds like a good option.
Paul

Tired this- Almost got it!

Here's a update of what's going on with the erasing & formatting (Along with a request for assistance). Nothing else has worked so far, not even Windows XP's Diskpart.exe

My latest attempt to erase these disks was to use Terminal. I can see each one with the diskutil list command. I can ask them to be formatted with this command (request?):
diskuti eraseDisk HFS+ diskname disk1

Terminal reports-
Started erase on disk 1
Unmounting Disk Creating Partition Map
Waiting For Disks to reappear

It will move along fine & then get stuck at "Waiting For Disks To Reappear 50%"
Each disk does this. All at 50%

I tried diskutil info to see if something was wacky there. This shows the disk & the size properly. They are not shown as Read Only. But, under "Read-Only Volume" it says N/A No File System

Do any of you know how to get the process back moving along? It's surprising that they all get stopped at 50% of Waiting For Disk To Re-Appear.
Thanks, I appreciate any suggestions for this challenge.
Paul