Time Machine and Seagate FreeAgent Desktop
I recently installed Mac OSX Leopard and have been looking forward to using the Time Machine backup feature. I regularly trash hard drives, so regular backups would be a good habit to get into. I went out and bought a 500GB FreeAgent USB 2.0 drive to do the job.
Long story short, I fired up Time Machine and it wouldn't recognize the drive (no error messages at all). After futzing around for awhile I inspected the drive with the built in drive utility and noticed that by default the drive is formatted as FAT (not even FAT32, whoa). So a quick reformat as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) made Time Machine much happier.
Woulda been nice if they could have popped a nice informational message stating that it couldn't write to FAT drives, suggesting I reformat or even offered to do it for me.
posted by Twinsen @ 9:48 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Maybe the new 10.5.1 update makes this better:
-Addresses formatting issues with certain drives used with Time Machine
I have the same problem..but I don't know what you did to fix it..
I have the same problem..but I don't know what you did to fix it..
Emily, You can use the disk utility to "erase" your external drive.
Run the disk utility via: Applications folder > Utilities folder > Disk Utility. On the erase tab should be a drop down to pick the format. I picked "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" before I erased and then Time Machine could recognize it.
thank you SO much!
I didn't even realize that 10.5.1 was out until i read this. I was having the same problem, so the first thing I did was go and download the 10.5.1 update. Sure enough, Time Machine now recognizes the drive, and does tell you that it needs to be reformatted!! I set up a few partitions so that my lady can use her crappy PC with the drive for her crappy backups, but this did the trick!
Thanks all!
Have you had any trouble with the FreeAgent Drive and Time Machine hanging things up after the Mac comes back out of sleep mode? I have, and have had to stop using the drive until I figure out a fix. Sometimes I get a message about an improperly ejected disc, sometimes the iMac won't restart, if I try that. Weird stuff. The problem went away when I unplugged the drive.
Siddavis, how did you partition your HD into a FAT32 and a HFS+?
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