Member Avatar for Steven1142

I have bought 2 different types of HDD and still I am unable to format using Disk Utilities it always gets stuck halfway.

Will buying an installation disk fix this problem? or is there somethan out there besides disk utility to format the HDD

Regards
-Steve

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Brief, practical summary: Disk Utility stalling halfway usually points to either a hardware/enclosure/power problem or a corrupt partition map — not something fixed by buying an OS installation disk. An install disc only helps reinstall macOS; it won’t revive a dying drive or a bad USB–SATA bridge.

Quick, non‑destructive checks to do first: try a different USB cable and port (and a powered hub for bus‑powered 3.5" drives), test the drive on another Mac or a Windows PC, and inspect System Information → USB to confirm the device is enumerated. Watch Console.app for repeated I/O or USB errors and check SMART status with a utility if available. If the device disconnects, shows read/write errors or failing SMART, treat it as hardware.

If basic checks look OK, rewrite the partition map from Recovery or Terminal instead of the GUI: boot Recovery (Command+R) and use Disk Utility there, or identify the disk with diskutil list and reformat with a command such as diskutil eraseDisk APFS 'MyDrive' /dev/diskX (replace APFS with JHFS+ on older macOS). If these commands return I/O errors or the Recovery Disk Utility also hangs, try a different enclosure or connect the drive directly to a desktop SATA port — the USB bridge or enclosure electronics are a common failure point.

was right to ask for exact error text — that narrows the cause. ’s suggestion to clear the disk’s partition map is valid, but if you’re uncomfortable using low‑level tools, use Recovery Disk Utility, GParted live, or the drive vendor’s diagnostic/repair tool. Final caution: these steps erase data; stop and seek data‑recovery help if the contents matter.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

You say it "gets stuck". What do you mean? Does it stop formatting and issue an error message? Does it just stop formatting and sit there seemingly doing nothing? If the latter, is the disc activity light still on? Please be more descriptive. Also, what make/model/size of HDDs are you trying to format? And have you tried from the console command line?

One final thing - what about partitioning the drive, or does the OSX format program do that for you?

Edited by rubberman
Member Avatar for dannyniu

When I can't format some disk, I zeros the beginning of the disk out and try again. It may have something to do with DiskUtil not being able to operate on certain disks with certain partition headers.

First check what's the BSD name of the disk in the DiskUtil infobox. It should be something like disk1234 where 1234 is the the specific number of the disk. If there's any suffix, remove it because it indicates the specific partition of the disk.

Second, open Terminal.app, Type sudo dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k of=/dev/r[diskn] # where you replace [diskn] with the BSD disk name of the disk you want to format.

Press return, and wait a few second, press Ctrl-C to interrupt the process (You need only to zero out the beginning of the disk).

Replug the disk in, then DiskUtil should be able to format it like a new one.

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