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InfiniteMac OSx86 › Leopard 10.5 › iPC 10.5.6 Drive cant be formatted :(
5,072 reads · 2010-01-22
Note Leopard 10.5 Retail DVD / USB

iPC 10.5.6 Drive cant be formatted :(

Ive tried iATKOS v7, iDeneb 10.5.7, Kalyway 10.5.2 and Leo4all v4.1 but none of them detected my internal HDD! So i tried iPC 10.5.6 and It detects my hard drive. But when I go into Disk Utility and try to erase it, it says error! disk…

Primary Author
@l2ounak Published 2010-01-22
Collection
Leopard 10.5
Archival Footprint
5,072 historical reads · 1 curated field notes (from 2 dispatches) · 2010-01-22
Credited Voices (2)
@l2ounak@srs5694

Ive tried iATKOS v7, iDeneb 10.5.7, Kalyway 10.5.2 and Leo4all v4.1 but none of them detected my internal HDD!
So i tried iPC 10.5.6 and It detects my hard drive.

But when I go into Disk Utility and try to erase it, it says error! disk cant be formatted. Sometimes it also says disk couldnt be unmounted! and i see options as verify disk, repair disk are disabled! Im not sure as to what it means.

Ive tried restarting it many times, and I dont even have any OS installed on that drive! the hard drive is empty! as i was so happy when My drive was detected, but seeing this problem im worried again

What could be done so that it could be formatted to MAC OSX (Journalled) Please look into it. I need help

Synthesized Community Field Notes

1 technical responses curated from 2 original dispatches

Field Note #1 @srs5694 2010-01-22

The installer is probably seeing an existing partition table and partition of a type that it doesn't understand.

Since you say the disk is empty, I'd first try using the partitioning tool to create entirely new partition(s). If this is to be an OS X-only system, or if you plan to dual boot with Linux, make them GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitions. (This option is hidden away on a sub-menu; you've got to click "Advanced" or "Options" or some such to get to it -- I don't recall the exact wording.) If you plan to dual-boot with Windows, make them Master Boot Record (MBR) partitions.

If this doesn't work, try using Parted Magic (parte dmagic.com) to create the partitions. This is a Linux-based emergency boot CD-R with various partitioning tools. I'm pretty sure it includes the ability to make HFS+ ("Mac OS Extended") partitions, although you may need to enable journaling after installing OS X. You'll need to use both a partitioning tool (fdisk or GNU Parted for MBR, gdisk or GNU Parted for GPT) and a filesystem-creation tool (mkfs.hfsplus). When you create a partition, make it of type 0xAF for MBR in fdisk or AF00 for GPT in gdisk. I'm not sure about GNU Parted offhand; I don't recall if it supports HFS+. If it does, you'd probably tell it to create a partition of type hfsplus, hfs, or mac. In any event, if you go this route, the partition should be detected by the installer when you reboot.

[EDIT] hi, im sory I forgot to write that i did this before! I even tried to make partition but still it sais failed! and tht is the reason i erased everything with Parted Magic and made the entire drive to hfs+, same error occured and hence i changed the whole drive to ntfs! its still the same i dont know wht to do!

Sources & Contributor Provenance (2 credited usernames · Thread #5277)
UsernameDossier ContributionDispatchesActive Window
@l2ounakPrimary Author12010-01-22
@srs5694Contributor12010-01-22