Hi, I have a 500GB Seagate HDD that I'm trying to reformat and clone my operating disk to. My problem is that the Seagate hard drive wont let me erase and reformat it to a file system that OS X can mount. I was using the hard drive to run FreeBSD. When I try to mount the disk I receive a "file system not recognized" message. I tried to reformat the drive in Disk Utility. Disk Utility is able to see the drive but when I try to erase the drive and reformat it into HFS+ it goes on business as usual but the disk stays the same, I get no error messages. I know that OS X shares roots with FreeBSD and I didn't see a problem with OS X mounting this disk.
I thought, maybe, the problem is that I opened an existing external hdd I had, a Seagate FreeAgentGO, and switched out the disk so that I would be able to reformat it and clone my operating disk to it. Perhaps the usb hardware controller isn't allowing me to reformat my disk? Except; I've installed different operating systems on the FreeAgentGO in the past. If it turns out that I've trashed the file system of the disk does someone know what tools I would use to repair the damage?
I HAVE tried finding solutions on Google and haven't found anything that has worked for me yet. I was hoping to use this experience to get more familiar with my command line. Anyone that can help would be a hero to me. :)
Have you tried using cfdisk or fdisk to reformat to hfs?
I'm using fdisk right now but I believe I have to know the disks' logical geometry. I used "-a hfs" and it gave me a blank hdd with absolutely nothing, not even a file system. :/ I looked the drive up on HP's website and they offer the manual online. This is all new to me and I can't make heads or tails of how to read and translate that onto the command line. :))
It's irritating to say the least.
I don't have the cfdisk command. I'm looking that up now as well, should that be here?