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Formatting Mac disks

Tags:
  • Mac OS X
  • Apple
  • Format
  • how-to
  • Unix
  • Formatting
  • Macintosh
Last response: in Mac Os X
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June 23, 2013 1:34:29 AM

how to format partitions on a Mac volume which are formatted as Apple Unix SVR. I have a HD which has OS X 10.4 on part of it but also has several partitions which are formatted as Apple Unix SVR from an old Linux PPC installation. Disk Utility will not mount them, thus cannot reformat them. Is there another utility I can use to wipe them clean or to format these partitions as HFS+?

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June 25, 2013 8:04:45 PM

Goodness how old is this hard drive in question?

Have you gotten a hold of any low-level formatting software, usually bundled with some hard drives on floppy disks (hah, I know)? These low level programs usually don't care what type of partitions are on a drive, and offer to format to RAW free space.

Alternately, you can see if you can get a copy of Solaris 10 (SunOS 5.10) which I believe runs on x86 hardware (maybe PPC...anybody know?). Not sure about the filesystem support however.

I usually use PartitionMagic for my partitioning/formatting needs but I doubt the support for the ancient filesystem in question.

Good luck
June 26, 2013 11:54:27 AM

vindicate7 said:
Goodness how old is this hard drive in question?

Have you gotten a hold of any low-level formatting software, usually bundled with some hard drives on floppy disks (hah, I know)? These low level programs usually don't care what type of partitions are on a drive, and offer to format to RAW free space.

Alternately, you can see if you can get a copy of Solaris 10 (SunOS 5.10) which I believe runs on x86 hardware (maybe PPC...anybody know?). Not sure about the filesystem support however.

I usually use PartitionMagic for my partitioning/formatting needs but I doubt the support for the ancient filesystem in question.

Good luck


June 26, 2013 12:01:11 PM

Hi vindicate7, thanks for answering. This is a PPC Mac from 2002. As it is a Mac, there's no floppy disc drive in it. I can probably get hold of OpenSolaris but I don't know if it runs on PPC.
I use Linux quite a lot and I have erased the relevant partitions using Partman from a Debian PPC install disc and then written random info over it (took ages) but still no joy when I try to use Disk Utility.
I'll check out OpenSolaris anyway and see what I can do.
Thanks for the suggestion.
!