I have a Western Data “My Passport” external USB 500 gb portable drive. Whenever I try erasing this drive using the Lion Disk Utility, the erase process appears to hang at about the 50% completion process. I have let the utility run for approximately (1) hr, but the progress meter never moves. The format type I have selected for for the drive is “Mac OS Extended (Journalized). Any ideas as to a cause and solution?
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Ray
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Formatting a USB Disk Using the Lion Disk Utility
Comments: 5 Responses to “Formatting a USB Disk Using the Lion Disk Utility”
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I would suspect a problem with the drive. Have you tried it with the secure erase option turned on?
As soon as the erase function begins to hang, the drive dismounts itself and the icon disappears from the desktop. After quitting Disk Utility then: disconnecting the USB cable, doing a cold boot and reconnecting the USB cable, the drive does not even show up in Finder. It shows up in Disk Utility but none of the operations, e.g., erase, partition etc. can be preformed. It's almost like the disk is lost somewhere in the "Ether".
Yep, sounds like it has failed. Toss it and get a new one.
Has been my experience that all "disk problems" (especially external USBs) are different - because we do different things with them.
Following might - or might not - help your situation, Can't hurt.
Finder, Applications, Disk Utility, (select drive) -- then you're on your own from whatever isn't greyed-out -- Verify, etc.
Have found "Repair Disk Permissions" helpful in past. Good Luck.
Found a solution.....don't know why it works.
Booted with my "Lion Recovery Disk, ran Disk Utility, requested an erase on the problem disk, formatted as Mac OS Extended (journalists)....function ran to completion without an error.