Hi everybody,

I've just switched the the wonderful Mac world but I have an issue with my exWindows external harddrive.

I have been using my Hitachi USB2 harddrive on windows XP without any problem. When I acquired my Mac I backed it up and reformated it in HFS+ (journaled) from the previous NTFS file format and then... impossible to read it. I can copy things on it but I can't read them.
When I run the disk utility to veify it, I receive the following message: "Verify volume failed with error Could not unmount disk".

I've tried to plug it directly on the Mac (it's normally connected thru a USB 2 HUB) - same story: when I turn it on, it takes ages to mount, I can see what's on it, I can copy things onto it but I can't copy from it.

The volume has no owner but the disk utility doesn't see any file on it (but the finder does).

I reformated it again but it didn't solve anything.

I was running Panther and recently upgraded to Tiger and it didn't solve anything either.

Can somebody help me? Should I consider buying another harddrive?

Cheers,

It's not just external HDs that display this behaviour.
The internal HD in an aging G4 flat panel iMac gives the same message (wasn't previously the case).
More weird stuff from the world of computers!

Peter Grimbeek

You cannot unmount a disk if the OS is running on it. You cannot unmount as long as a process is running, that may may be unvisible for you. A Menu XTra, EyeTV-Helper or any other. Use the Activity Meter (Apple Utility) to see what is runnig. In that Program you can also end the running Process or Processes. After that Your disk will unmount.

Best, redage

Correct!

After posting the above, I looked again to find the OS9 Classic interface was running in the background. After stopping that process, it became possible to unmount the HD.

Peter G.

Tiger uses a new filesystem mac os x extended (Journaled). I recommend erasing by zeroing then formatting in extended (Journaled) through disk utility.
If you have special data you may not want to do that, but this may get you some more time out of your drive.

I appreciate your comments.

I should point out that I'm not dealing with the OS9 issue any longer. That was easy.

But I'm still encountering HDs on an iMac G4 and on a newish MacBook that won't unmount.

I'm guessing that the culprit is the journalling. Since in order to format the drive I need to unmount it first, so, I'm now thinking of using my copy of Techtool Pro to turn off the journalling.

Peter Grimbeek

Do you have any valuable data on it?
What happens if you just unplug it?
As long as you don't have any valuable data on there (you're going to format) it should be fine. As long as the disk isn't spun up it should change anything anyway(you can hear it).
If you need the data I can give you some pointers.

Please tell about Hitachi USB2?

A good idea.
I'd forgotten about Activity Manager. I use its equivalent on the Windows platform to kill processes and should be able to do same on Apple OS platform.
Peter