Mac Neophyte Tips: “Volume Erase Failed” on new USB drives?

10.21.2008, Uncategorized, by udo.

When you get a new USB drive, it’s usually formatted with FAT (the Windows compatibility filesystem). As long as it’s not NTFS (the Windows journaled filesystem), you can usually read from and write to the drive without problems when you hook it up to a Mac. However, if you don’t need Windows compatibility, it’s a good idea to format the drive using the native OS X filesystem. It offers more features, better Mac compatibility and journaling to make your data safer.

Normally, you can easily re-format any drive on the Mac by opening Disk Utility, selecting the disk in question and choose erase with the “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” option. Sometimes, this returns a “Volume Erase Failed: The underlying task reported failure on exit” message. This is a horrible unixism, because Disk Utility obviously called a command-line tool that exited with some cryptic error message so it doesn’t know what to do.

First of all, there is most likely nothing wrong with your new USB disk, don’t listen to the support forums. This is the thing: when your USB drive was factory-formatted, they partitioned it to be as compatible with Windows PCs as possible, so they gave it a partition setup called “Master Boot Record”. And for some disk sizes, you can’t put a Mac OS partition on top of that. So all you gotta do is change the partition scheme of the drive.

Go open Disk Utility, select the USB drive. Make sure not to click on the underlying partition, but on the actual disk drive entry above it. You can find it easily, because it’s not only labeled with the whole disk size, but also identifies the manufacturer of the device and its model name. After clicking on the device, select the “Partition” tab > click on the “Volume Scheme” dropdown menu > select “1 Partition” > click on the “Options” button.

Then, a dialog window appears where you can select the partition scheme. It’s probably marked “Master Boot Record”. Go ahead and select the “GUID Partition Table” (or “Apple Partition Map” if you want to boot off the disk with a legacy PowerPC-based Mac). Click “OK” to close the dialog and then click the “Apply” button to re-format the drive. Should work like a charm!

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0 Responses to Mac Neophyte Tips: “Volume Erase Failed” on new USB drives?

2008-11-03 at 17:55 Stewart S :

Awesome! It worked like a charm. This was the smartest solution I’ve found online regarding this issue. THANKS!
2008-11-04 at 13:57 admin :

You’re welcome!
Nice to see it helped!
2008-12-01 at 08:31 Jarred :

worked for me as well. thanks.
2008-12-26 at 15:04 jason :

you’re a genius – thanks!
2009-01-09 at 16:42 Evan :

Outstanding! Works like a charm. Thank you much.
2009-01-13 at 13:25 David :

I also found this a welcome change after trying for ages to find out what was the problem. Thanks a lot for sharing your genius…
2009-02-09 at 21:47 Chris :

Thanks so much.
2009-03-13 at 14:04 Manny :

Worked like a charm. (western digital external 1tb)
Thank you!!
2009-03-15 at 06:54 Pablo :

I was 5 minutes away from driving to Staples to return my drive when I found this. Thank you VERY much.
2009-03-24 at 21:04 daniel :

I was just about to return my drive as well. Thank you.
2009-04-05 at 15:53 Ed :

Thank you as well. just had this problem and could format at FAT 32 so I knew the drive was good. Tried re-booting and nothing worked. Did a google search and found this forum. Worked perfectly.

THANK YOU!!!!
2009-04-13 at 14:41 aleks :

thanks worked perfectly, one thing i think intel based mac’s are supposed to use the GUID partition, not sure but after seeking an answer to use my external hard drive this was the best advice, thanks again! =)
2009-04-17 at 15:11 Ross :

Thanks very much – clear and effective!!
2009-05-12 at 07:01 Zak :

Amazing! I can’t wait to show my friends how to fix this problem and pretend like I came up with the idea all by myself!…
OK no really this saves me ‘paying’ for Diskwarrior. Thank you so much!
2009-05-12 at 22:03 Chris Moncus :

Why did I try for 3 hours instead of consulting Google to find you?

Thanks so much for the help!
2009-06-11 at 05:24 Pete :

Thanks.
2009-07-06 at 15:20 Ivan :

Wow, I thought my new drives were bad as I could not format mac journaled, only DOS format. THANK YOU!!! Saved me a huge headache.
2009-07-14 at 08:30 Barry :

Thank you so much, a very clear and concise explaination, just what I needed.
2009-08-04 at 17:56 mRoby@88 :

Outstanding! It worked like a charm. This was the smartest solution ever regarding this issue.
2009-08-13 at 05:59 Laobhan :

Hi, thanks a million – that worked a treat. Like others I was about to head back to the store when I came across your post. The only thing I am worried about now is that the disk (Seagate Terra) is making a continuous clicking noise when operational. It is taking data and I can read/Write and it is doing everything I want it to do – but just wondering should I be worried about the clicking.

Thanks again
2009-08-13 at 08:50 Udo :

Laobhan, is it an external enclosure with a separate power source? Because if that power source is not connected, sometimes the current on the USB port is barely enough to power the drive, leading to intermittent shut downs…
2009-08-14 at 02:21 Andy :

Thankyou. I was about to return it to the store and found your wise words online. Thankyou again
2009-08-14 at 12:22 Chris :

At the precise moment panic set in, I found this article. Lifesaver. Thanks for the help.
2009-08-19 at 18:30 Brian :

thank you so much for this – you really saved me!
2009-11-30 at 21:53 Danny :

Thank you so much for posting this! I did a google search on the error message, found this page and saved myself a huge headache by simply following your instructions.
Thank you!
2010-01-01 at 10:58 Mithu :

Great Solution! You would think that the drive manufacturer would document this issue in the box, especially when they advertise mac compatibility.
2010-01-08 at 12:00 Ricky :

AMAZING! Thanks for the help!!
2010-01-18 at 18:59 HB :

Thanks!! Totally solved my problem and made my day. I was soooo mad when the format kept failing and I thought I got a defective drive. Thank you so much for the help.
2010-04-12 at 23:03 Eric :

Amazing. The Support Forums @ Seagate couldn’t make this simple instructions post. Almost two years later and youre still solving problems. Thanks.
2010-05-20 at 19:16 Jimy :

I just tried it and I got this error now;

Partition Failed With Error:

Operation Timed Out
2010-11-09 at 14:20 Mark :

Thanks dude, it is a strange error and your solution worked perfectly after a long time trying.
Nice one!
2011-03-06 at 03:02 Awesomeness! :

Thanks so much. Solve my issue instantly!
2011-06-27 at 03:42 wicpic :

Works, instantly. Thanks.

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