External Hard Drive Format

[thopunk]

I just received a 500GB WD hard drive and enclosure from ebay. I went to format it with disk utility, and when i try to format the main drive, it keeps going back to FAT. however, the partition remains in the osx journaled format. is this okay to use? or will it end up failing a little later on after use? thanks!

 

[squeeks]

i dont understand the problem, if the partition says osx journaled whats the problem?

 

[thopunk]

here is a screen shot that might help. check out what is selected and what it says in the erase tab:

*removed for bandwidth*

 

[RichardF]

I went to format it with disk utility, and when i try to format the main drive, it keeps going back to FAT.

It looks like it goes back to FAT after you do the formatting? That's odd.

 

[yellow]

Well, part of it is that in order to format a drive as FAT32, one must select the drive. When one select the drive name, FAT isn't a possibility, so it defaults to HFS+.

But what it defaults to doesn't matter. When you format it as one way or the other, is it working?

 

[thopunk]

the portion that is selected and says FAT, when i click erase, and select to change it to the osx format, it remains as FAT. when i created that other partition, which is the entire drive basically, it stays at the osx format... which is what i want. on another external drive i have (wd mydisk), when i select the main part and the partition, both are osx formatted. thats why im confused. i dont really get why there is the main drive and then the partition listed and how they can have different formats either.

 

[yellow]

Again, they aren't different formats. Only "Untitled" is formatted. The other icon, with the manufacturer's info is not a formatted disk.

This could be an oddity with the drive's enclosure.

 

[thopunk]

ok, now i understand what you are saying.

will this drive work fine? or should i send it back? thanks!

 

[yellow]

I don't know. Only way to know for sure is to test it. Odds are it will work fine.