Hi Guys!
I have a My Passport SE for Mac and I cant format this HD, I tried too many times using Mac OS Exp and nothing happens.
Could someone help me?
Thanks!
Could you explain what you mean by nothing happens?
Hi Ardvark, thanks for ask!
I can’t format the HD, all the time the hd starts to format but doesn’t conclude.
I tried to divide in 3 partitions and I could format but after restart I lost all the partitions again.
I will ask the suport to change my HD, in my opinion this HD has problems.
Thanks again!
What utility are you using to format the drive? Have you tried to do a full write-zeros to the dirve (you can use WD’s Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows on a PC to do this)? This solves the vast majority of partition issues.
If You Will format this Hard Drive For your Mac Try to make Sure that you are selecting the Appropiate
Options for Example : Choosing a Partition Scheme…
If Your Mac Computer is Intel-based Mac , Under options in disk utility You Will Need to Select ‘‘GUID PARTITION TABLE’’
Otherwise if your Mac Computer is a Power-Pc based Mac Computer, under Disk Utility ‘‘OPTION’’ You’ll Need to Select ‘‘APPLE PARTITION MAP’’
If Your Drive is Still Unable to Be formatted, i will Suggest you To Try With another Mac Computer,
Otherwise You Can use A ‘‘FORMAT UTILITY’’ Such as ‘‘IPARTITION’’ in Order to format your HD
In Case none of this Steps Work, i Will recommend you to Replace the Unit… 
If you have any other questions, please let me know :O…
Same problem here. Not solved.
Actually, there is a very annoying problem. When the formating is over, the drive becomes so much instable that it’s available once in a while. Rest of the time, it’s like the communication freezes between the OS and the hard drive or something.
When partitioning, Disk Utility alerts with various messages depending on the scheme configuration. The last I have in mind is the GUID scheme, 2 partitions (40Go - 900Go+) on HFS+. When Disk Utility is fed up with something, it alerts that I have no right to format the disk –end of all.
Here is the Disk Utility log (sorry for the french report… one may focus on bold lines):
2010-12-14 02:44:28 +0100: Utilitaire de disque a commencé.
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Préparation de la partition du disque : « WD My Passport 0730 Media »
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Schéma de partition : Tableau de partition GUID [<= GUID Scheme]
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: 2 volumes seront créés
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100:
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Partition 1
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Nom : « OSX Installer »
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Taille : 40,0 Go
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Système de fichiers : Mac OS étendu (journalisé) [<= HFS+]
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100:
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Partition 2
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Nom : « My Passport »
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Taille : 891,5 Go
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Système de fichiers : Mac OS étendu (journalisé) [<= HFS+]
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100:
2010-12-14 02:45:41 +0100: Création d’une carte de partition.
2010-12-14 02:46:25 +0100: La partition a échoué pour le disque (null) Permission denied [<= The process failed]
2010-12-14 02:46:25 +0100: Partition complète.
2010-12-14 02:46:25 +0100:
2010-12-14 02:46:25 +0100: Erreur sur la partition : Permission denied [<= Error on partition]
2010-12-14 02:50:59 +0100: Préparation de la mise à zéro du disque : « Sans titre »
2010-12-14 02:50:59 +0100: Passes : 0
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: L’effacement sécurisé de l’espace libre a été ignoré 7 minutes.
1.3% terminé. [<= They wanted to test my patience for 8 hours!!! Can’t get that, skipped]
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: Préparation de l’effacement : « Sans titre » [<= Now it tries to format the 2nd partition]
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: Schéma de partition : Non formaté
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: 1 volume sera effacé
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: Nom : « Sans titre »
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: Taille : 931,5 Go
2010-12-14 02:59:05 +0100: Système de fichiers : Mac OS étendu (journalisé)
2010-12-14 02:59:11 +0100: Initialized /dev/rdisk5 as a 931 GB HFS Plus volume with a 81920k journal
2010-12-14 02:59:11 +0100: Montage du disque.
2010-12-14 02:59:41 +0100: Could not mount disk5 with name after erase [<= How that ??? Why ???]
2010-12-14 02:59:41 +0100: Effacement terminé [Job done.]
2010-12-14 02:59:41 +0100:
**********
I also tried to use Drive Genius to initialize the disk. Same frustration but it just reports that it failed.
I did the thing with Disk Utility on 3 different Macs (iMac - MacBook Pro - MacBook / 10.6 & OSX 10.5 utd). The only working but not nice work around where to format it with Windows. Reformatting with OSX after that did the same fails.
If any one has further information or just a solution, it would be really great. I’d better like not to have to return the hard drive to the merchant… And of course, I want to use it on OSX 
- Already have NTFS-3G driver installed to read-right the NTFS system, but I’m so narrow minded on this that I want to have an alternative bootable installation of OSX on it. So bootable, 2 partitions and HFS+ are absolutely required.
I was afraid that it could be my external drive that where down, but it seems that other people are experiencing the same problems.
Now thanks for reading me and thanks again for taking us ahead on.
Did you read the post right above yours number 5? I think this is the utility he’s talking about http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php I don’t know about Macs but Gabthemonster does.
Joe
I just found this http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3865 see if it helps.
Joe
Hello Joe_S.
Those are just standart ways of formatting. Done all that already. In many ways even.
I checked deeper in logs and trials. My guess is that the USB controller is not fully compatible with USB2.0 . It makes sense as on Windows, the drive needs a driver to be recognized well (when I tried to format under Windows, I needed to install that before. Thankfully, I had backed up the original drive filesystem and could get the utilities back!)
Today, I tried to see what happens on the kernel side during the formatting. It happens that the drive really doesn’t respond for long periods.
Extract of the log :
Dec 14 15:12:07 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15543.475 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
Dec 14 15:12:13 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15549.475 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
Dec 14 15:12:19 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15555.476 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
Dec 14 15:12:25 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15561.477 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
Dec 14 15:12:31 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15567.477 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
Dec 14 15:12:37 mb-jp-3 kernel[0]: USBF: 15573.477 AppleUSBEHCI[0x6c72800]::Found a transaction which hasn’t moved in 5 seconds on bus 0x24, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)
After some other trials, it ends on the disk being show in USB hardware, but not shown on Disk Utility. Logs reports that the USBDevice cannot be opened.
This is now the limit of my patience and I am preparing the disk for return.
Thanks for the time and hope some people will be more lucky. But I guess that WD just has to update their firmware…
If you still want to give it one more try before sending it back for a replacement.
Try update the firmware, download from this link below
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=2&lang=en
Make sure to unplug the passport drive from the computer and reboot the computer after that.
