Reformat external drive

jpsheets

jpsheets

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

My workflow is a Dell laptop with P2 Genie to a GRaid drive which is FAT32 formatted. I'm having trouble transfering P2 files over with P2 Genie and I think it's something to do with the drive although I'm not sure. I've got plenty of space (233 gig or so). But I've got some old files on there from a past project.

Now, I tried to use the disk utility feature on the G5 Mac to erase the files on the drive, and now when I plug the drive into my laptop it shows up as two drives, E and F. Is that weird or what? Do I just need to reformat the entire drive?

I'm not a techie so any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance!

JP
 
I'm paranoid about drives, but if you have the time it might be worth it to have Disk Utility write zeros to the free space on the disk also. It'll take a few hours (I let it run overnight) but I like the idea that every bit of the disk has seen action. This can be found under the "Erase" tab, in the "Erase Free Space" button. No need to do the 7x/35x erase, unless you want to wait a REALLY long time.
 
Thanks for all the info guys. Here's an update.

I reformatted the drive and was still having I/O errors. Just for kicks I reformatted the drive to MS-DOS extended. That seemed to solve the problem. I could write to and from the drive on my Mac. The only problem now is that my Dell Laptop can't see the drive. You guys know the difference between MS-Dos and MS-Dos extended? And would that cause the PC not to see the drive?

I'm still concerned I've got a bad drive. What ticks me off is that it's a G-Raid and I've only had it a few months with very little use.

thanks in advance!

JP
 
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