Problem Formatting One Terabyte Drive

[jdc]

something happened when you first tried to format it -- not sure if it had to be with the fact that it wouldnt umount or whatever -- but it should have taken all of 30 seconds to reformat

i just did several 1TB drives in the last couple of weeks, disc utility popped right up and it was done and formatted right away -- 2 seagates, 1 WD and 2 hitachis -- if i remember right

i also have a month old 400 gig WD portable FW 800/USB that i only use FW 800 with, worked the first time and has everytime since then...

[mjgkramer]

jdc wrote:
something happened when you first tried to format it -- not sure if it had to be with the fact that it wouldnt umount or whatever -- but it should have taken all of 30 seconds to reformat

It first screwed up when I tried to format it. Strangely since it won't let me do anything else, it is letting me write zeroes on it, which is taking a long time, 8 hours with firewire. It remains to be seen if I can do anything with it when the zeroing is finished or if it will finish.

I appreciate all the suggestions from everyone.

[jdc]

i would just take it back -- theres no reason it should need a write to zero format

[heap1]

Is it the My Book Studio Edition drive? If it is maybe the firmware needs to be updated like on my drive.

You shouldn't have any difficulty reformatting. It should take less than a minute to do in disk utility.

If none of these things work you probably have a defective drive.

[mjgkramer]

The zeroing did not work. After many hours it went to completion but then generated an error message. Giving up I read the Quick Install Guide and found the following:

"Mac OS X 10.2.8 is not compatible with FAT32 partitions greater than 128 GB. To use My Book with this operating system, you must reformat the drive to Mac system format. See Knowledge Base Answer ID 287 at support.wdc.com for instructions."

I followed the procedure given in Answer ID 287 and the drive formatted and tested OK.

Thanks for all the suggestions.