Format Lacie External Hard Drive For Mac

I bought a 250GB Lacie Porsche external hard drive because I was satisfied with the smooth running 160GB drive I've been using for a couple of years. In the packaging was a note saying that the drive was configured to work with various Windows formats and OS9, and that OSX users should initialize the drive using Disk Utility. I connected the drive, and erased it, but there was no option for choosing a Mac format for the drive.

I tried to back up my iTunes music folder to it, but after 16GB the transfer stopped, and there was an error message saying that my destination drive was full. Does anyone know how I can correctly initialize the HD so I can use it with my Macs? I'm running a G4 iBook and a first generation (lampstyle) G4 iMac. Actually, I didn't have a journaled Mac format option. For the format options, the pulldown menu only had one choice - MS-DOS.

I thought there'd be a Mac option there, but no sirree. I didn't get as far as trying to partition the HD, and am not sure that I would want to - I use the 160 GB HD as one big storage closet to stick stuff in, and was thinking that I'd use the new one the same way. (I've been a longtime Mac user, but am kind of ignorant about the under-the-hood stuff, as these embarassing posts no doubt reveal!) thanks for any ideas, J. I don't know if this is any help, but here's the Info from a Get Info inside Disk Utility. (I called the disk drive Further Out) Name: FURTHER OUT Type: Volume Disk Identifier: disk1s1 Mount Point: /Volumes/FURTHER OUT File System: MS-DOS File System (FAT32) Connection Bus: FireWire Partition Type: Windows FAT32 Device Tree: fw/node@d04b590d0a7c78/sbp-2@c000/@0:1 Writable: Yes Capacity: 232.9 GB (250,056,705,024 Bytes) Free Space: 232.8 GB (249,995,427,840 Bytes) Used: 192.0 KB (196,608 Bytes) Number of Files: 0 Number of Folders: 0 Owners Enabled: No Can Turn Owners Off: No Can Be Formatted: Yes Bootable: No Supports Journaling: No Journaled: No S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported Disk Number: 1 Partition Number: 1. Problem solved!

And it was something kind of stupid - as these things often are: When I first erased the drive, I wasn't sure which to pick, the one named LACIE, and the other that was more specific, something like LACIE SgA3. A friend told me it didn't make a difference. In fact, it did - the original LACIE was only formattable as MS-DOS, whereas the more specific drive name gave me all the options. The drive is now appropriately formatted, and my iTunes back-up is proceeding apace. Thanks for all of your patient help! I purchased a LaCie 100G portable hard drive because I will be in a situation where probability of theft, of my computer, will be higher than usual. I am also concerned with the incoinvience of any computer problem.

It would be ideal to have both a bootable drive and data on the drive that is accessible with a pc. I understand how to partition the drive, but is it possible to format one partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to use as the bootable drive and format the other partition as MS-DOS in the event that I have to use someone’s pc to retrieve my data? Well I called LaCie. They suggested the following: Create two partitions the first will be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

The second partition should be formatted as free space ( which is one of the options when selecting format type). Use Carbon-Copy Clone (free down-loadable software) to create an exact copy of my mac (operating system, applications, data files, pics, music, everything!) on the first partition.

Then plug the portable drive into a pc and using the utilities application (or whatever it is called on a pc) and format the free space as FAT/32. One caveat the free space partition must be less than 32 gigs for this to work (I didn’t ask why).

Does anyone have any experience with Carbon Copy Clone? Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.

Lacie External Hard Drive Repair

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