Hi all,

Ok...I bought a Maxtor Basics External Hard Drive....I try and use Disk Utilities to reformat it...(says its can be used with Mac on the box) and guess what- no dice....
Here's what I have done

Opened disk Utilites-
Select the crap disk
Select erase tab
(change the volume format to Mac OS extended Journalled
Click erase and this is what I get.




Is there anything i can do or should I take it back....it really shouldnt be this hard...never had this issue before.

Have you got the External Drive connected to its own power source?
Are you connecting it to your Apple via USB?

i bought one of those about a month ago - external 1TB drive.

i followed your steps with the formatting and it just worked.

try another USB cable if you can
otherwise i'd say take it back and get it replaced .... you can't really do much more than that

All of these models utterly rock... yet only a miniscule handful of people in MacTalk have gotten wise...

From some time ago, posted by Brains - click here.

Yes it was connected by its own power supply..yes usb.I packed it away in disgust ready to take back - but maybe I should check the usb cable....so annoyed at the moment.
bashir- yes this is a 1tb too...glad you havent had any problems with yours.
Clock- thats ALOT of models for me to wade through! LOL.

I had a similar problem with a WD 750Gb Home Edition FW drive. Though I can't remember the exact error message it would not let me format in Mac OS Extended Journaled. I was able to format it back to FAT32 and use it, but ofcourse it then wasn't visible on my network. In the end I found that if I created two partions, a small FAT32 one and a larger Mac OS Extended one, then everything worked well.

Ok try this. I had a similar problem with my Western Digital MyBook. You need to format it with a GUID.

1. Open Disk Utility
2. Select the disk
3. Jump to the partition tab
4. Hit the options button down the bottom and select GUID. See picture.



5. Click ok.
6. Give your partition a name
7. Click Apply
8. Play the waiting gane,

EDIT: I forgot to mention something. Don't format it as FAT/windows. Use Mac OS extended (Journaled)

elnewb I'm going to kiss you!!! Thank you!!! Works fine....I actually packed the thing up and went back to where I bought it and dealt with utter well utter idiots that plugged it in to their machine (A NON MAC) and told me it worked fine and wouldnt give me $ back. They said can you bring your laptop in! FFS!!!

Anyway *smoooch* thanks so much....

Good to hear that it worked!