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Formatting a hard drive on a PowerMac G3 B&W

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  • Mac OS X
  • Partition
  • Hard Drives
  • Formatting
Last response: in Mac Os X
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October 9, 2013 12:37:32 PM

Hi, I apologize if this is something simple that I just haven't noticed but I'm having some difficulty trying to format a hard drive for my old PowerMac G3 Blue & White. I'm trying to install Mac OS X cheetah but whenever I try partition the hard drive on disk utility it says "Unmount failed, the operation failed because a partition on the disk is in use". I'm confused the hard drive is completely blank, I'm just using the mac OS X disk.

More about : formatting hard drive powermac

December 27, 2013 4:03:47 PM

It's been almost three months and there is still no answer. I'm still stuck with an old apple desktop that is serving has a fantastic paper-weight! Still no matter what I try it will not format to Mac OS Extended, I've checked apple's website and other forums but no one else is having this problem.

If it's any use here is the hard drive I'm trying to format/'partition' (it recognizes it as 74.53gb) http://www.cclonline.com/product/6436/WD800BB/Hard-Driv...
December 28, 2013 3:02:06 AM

Open a terminal session and type

sudo umount -f /Volumes/<Whatever the disk name is>

(You can check the name of the mounted volumes with "ls /Volumes".) This will forceably unmount the disk (not something you should do if you care about its contents) and allow you to then partition and format it.
Related resources
December 28, 2013 1:04:09 PM

Ijack said:
Open a terminal session and type

sudo umount -f /Volumes/<Whatever the disk name is>

(You can check the name of the mounted volumes with "ls /Volumes".) This will forceably unmount the disk (not something you should do if you care about its contents) and allow you to then partition and format it.


Sorry I'm a complete apple newbie (apart from this I've never owned a single apple product in my life), but when I enter this (outside of the OS X installer) it says "sudo" is an unknown word, isn't sudo mainly used in os's like Ubuntu and other Linux distro's?

Image: http://www.ezimba.com/work/131229C/ezimba18218161720200...
December 28, 2013 1:49:58 PM

Ah - that is the OpenFirmware prompt rather than an OS X terminal. I have to confess that I have never used a version of OS X as old as the one that you are trying to install, but with the versions I have used one of the available options when you boot from an install disk is to open a terminal session. (Having said that, if you are running this from an install disk then the "sudo" part is unnecessary.)

Frankly, I'm a little puzzled that any disks are mounted if you are running disk utility from an install disk. Of course, it may be that the whole install process is different than in later versions of OS X. Am I correct in thinking that you are booting from the install CD and running Disk Utility from there?
December 28, 2013 2:15:19 PM

Ijack said:
Ah - that is the OpenFirmware prompt rather than an OS X terminal. I have to confess that I have never used a version of OS X as old as the one that you are trying to install, but with the versions I have used one of the available options when you boot from an install disk is to open a terminal session. (Having said that, if you are running this from an install disk then the "sudo" part is unnecessary.)

Frankly, I'm a little puzzled that any disks are mounted if you are running disk utility from an install disk. Of course, it may be that the whole install process is different than in later versions of OS X. Am I correct in thinking that you are booting from the install CD and running Disk Utility from there?


Yes I am running the Disk utility from the OS X Cheetah install disk. Also when I boot from the disk I am greeted with the installer, as far as I'm aware there is no terminal option.

More useful-ish images:
1.http://www.ezimba.com/work/131229C/ezimba18218175746100...
2.http://www.ezimba.com/work/131229C/ezimba18218138758100...
3.http://www.ezimba.com/work/131229C/ezimba18218134270400...
December 28, 2013 2:41:30 PM

OK. Thanks for the images. That is a very unusual situation and I can't understand why the disk is mounted and in use (in fact, looking at disk utility - bearing in mind that this is an older version than I am used to - it doesn't look to be mounted). However, I have found this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1176653 which refers to a very similar situation. The verdict seemed to be that the disk was either bad or jumpered wrongly.

You have two disks (although I'm not sure whether disk1 is a hard disk or the CD drive) and they are IDE; one should be jumpered as master and one as slave (assuming that they are connected to the same controller with a single cable with two connectors for the drives - if they are on separate cables then they should both be jumpered as masters). You'll need to Google to find out which pins need to be jumpered to achieve this (it varies depending upon the disk). If that fails then I'm afraid it sounds as if the drive is bad. Do you have another computer you could test it in?

What's the history of this machine? Do you know that it was working recently with it's current configuration or is this a new disk that you have put in and bought from the advert you linked to? (That could well explain why it is jumered wrong as it may have been a secondary disk in the machine it was pulled from.) As an aside, I would go for a newer version of OS X if possible - that one really is very old.

I hope this makes some sort of sense to you and gives you a hint as to where to start looking. It's not a situation that I have ever seen or heard of before.
December 28, 2013 2:53:50 PM

Ijack said:
OK. Thanks for the images. That is a very unusual situation and I can't understand why the disk is mounted and in use (in fact, looking at disk utility - bearing in mind that this is an older version than I am used to - it doesn't look to be mounted). However, I have found this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1176653 which refers to a very similar situation. The verdict seemed to be that the disk was either bad or jumpered wrongly.

You have two disks (although I'm not sure whether disk1 is a hard disk or the CD drive) and they are IDE; one should be jumpered as master and one as slave (assuming that they are connected to the same controller with a single cable with two connectors for the drives - if they are on separate cables then they should both be jumpered as masters). You'll need to Google to find out which pins need to be jumpered to achieve this (it varies depending upon the disk). If that fails then I'm afraid it sounds as if the drive is bad. Do you have another computer you could test it in?

What's the history of this machine? Do you know that it was working recently with it's current configuration or is this a new disk that you have put in and bought from the advert you linked to? (That could well explain why it is jumered wrong as it may have been a secondary disk in the machine it was pulled from.) As an aside, I would go for a newer version of OS X if possible - that one really is very old.

I hope this makes some sort of sense to you and gives you a hint as to where to start looking. It's not a situation that I have ever seen or heard of before.


Yeah honestly I'm as confused as you are I've never seen something like this. As for the history of the hard drive, well it's brand new I just recently bought it from a store near where I live which means I could have messed up on the hard drive installation. However the history of the Mac itself I know very little, it was bought at a 'boot sale' they didn't want it and the guy I bought it from said he had erased the drive it came with and that it was in perfect working condition! Also disk1 is the optical drive. The theory of the bad jumper's makes a lot of sense to me and I'll have to have a look at it.

Edit: Oh and by the way just to confirm, I'm almost certain the Mac has been modified it's RAM is like a party of brands and I changed the original hard drive it came with because before I knew disk utility existed I thought the drive was faulty!
December 28, 2013 3:06:09 PM

As it's a new drive I'll go with the installation theory rather than any fault with the drive or Mac. But I did have one other thought. In the partitioning screen you are using the "current partition scheme". It might be worth trying to create a new partition (with the "1 partition" option rather than "current") to see if that makes any difference. If you still have the old drive you could even try popping that back in and see what happens - you might not want to use that drive, but at least it would help narrow down the problem.

And now it's past my bedtime, so I'll leave you too it and wish you good luck. Let us know what happens; I'll be back in the morning if you have any further questions. I'm only sorry that I can't give you a definitive answer immediately.
December 28, 2013 3:18:06 PM

Just tried that now same thing happened unmount failed it's in use, I think I'll be going to bed too now I didn't realize how late it was. Also don't try think about this mac too much it's given me so many headaches I've been going in circles with trying to fix this ancient machine! I'll take a closer look at the hard drive and CD-ROM setup in the morning.

Edit: Just woke up I'm currently having a battle with the molex connectors that power it's Zip disk and CD drive. I've just found out that it's IDE cables that connected the zip disk and cd rive were stuck down with something that looks like a mix between glue and bubble gum. I'm half tempted to steal a IDE dvd drive from one of my dead computers, would that be possible? I believe it's actually a fault with the CD drive rather than the actual hard drive, the hard drive is set master.
December 29, 2013 4:34:34 AM

I thought I had found the problem the CD-ROM was set to master, I've set it to slave and it still says that the unmount failed because it's in use. I am completely clueless now.
December 29, 2013 5:15:13 AM

If you had an external FireWire hard disk free I could suggest a possible workaround. But that's a pretty slim chance, and it's not worth buying one just for that. Is this your only Mac?

I'm pretty well out of ideas as to what the problem can be. I can't think that the drive is incompatible with your Mac. Do you still have the old hard drive?
December 29, 2013 6:33:19 AM

Ijack said:
If you had an external FireWire hard disk free I could suggest a possible workaround. But that's a pretty slim chance, and it's not worth buying one just for that. Is this your only Mac?

I'm pretty well out of ideas as to what the problem can be. I can't think that the drive is incompatible with your Mac. Do you still have the old hard drive?


Yes I still have the old hard drive and like I mentioned before this PowerMac is the only apple product I own, however I know someone who owns an iMac thats runs OS X Mavericks. Also I've disconnected the Zip drive since I have nothing to use it with and It rules out an issue with that. I beginning to think that this computer has gained sentience and is deliberately not working because I have no clue what is wrong with it.
December 29, 2013 7:17:12 AM

I'd be inclined to put the old hard drive back in and try installing on that. If that worked you could then connect both drives, see if you can partition and format the new one from within OS X itself, and if so clone the old drive to the new one. Roundabout, but it would end up with the new disk bootable (you take the old disk out and use the new one). If you can't install on the old disk then it might indicate a more serious problem.
January 2, 2014 6:14:53 AM

Ijack said:
I'd be inclined to put the old hard drive back in and try installing on that. If that worked you could then connect both drives, see if you can partition and format the new one from within OS X itself, and if so clone the old drive to the new one. Roundabout, but it would end up with the new disk bootable (you take the old disk out and use the new one). If you can't install on the old disk then it might indicate a more serious problem.


IT'S A SORT OF LATE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! NOT ONLY HAS IT FORMATTED IT'S NOW INSTALLING MAC OS X 10.0! Oh my goodness me I'm flabbergasted that it's actually working! I reinstalled the old hard drive and at first it still refused to format showing the same error, however after setting it on the "Current" partition setting and leaving it's name as "Untitled" it suddenly sprang to life! Although it's apparently going to take 3 hours to install it will be worth it (hopefully). Also the old hard drive sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Thank you for the help!

Edit: Also I currently have both HDD's installed, both the 80GB and the original 20GB.
January 2, 2014 7:22:21 AM

Hmmm, after installing it restarted and showed the 'happy mac face' icon which usually means everything is working. But it stayed on that for about half an hour and didn't do anything else so I restarted it and it's now showing a icon of a file ripped in half. Does that mean it was actually doing something and I messed it up?

Edit: That's odd I restarted again and it's showing the happy mac icon again...whats going on? The hard drive isn't making the same horrible noise and nothing seems to be happening just a picture of a mac classic with a smiley face. I just tried ejecting the disk but the same thing happened.
January 2, 2014 7:55:26 AM

Well, I believe that sounds like it can't find an OS to boot. I'm beginning to wonder if these symptoms you are experiencing, which seem to be erratic, indicate a hardware fault.
January 2, 2014 8:16:09 AM

Ijack said:
Well, I believe that sounds like it can't find an OS to boot. I'm beginning to wonder if these symptoms you are experiencing, which seem to be erratic, indicate a hardware fault.


How do I just boot off the CD again to try re-install OS X?

Edit: Well I restarted five times and it appears to be working, it's going through user setup now I'll just check it works.
Update: It's working! Mac OS X 10.0 has installed now and is working fine! Well looks like I've got my first mac now :p  it might be old but I'm sure I can find it a use!
January 2, 2014 9:17:11 AM

Good news. Obviously, like all of us, it is feeling its age and needs a prod to wake up in the morning. Have fun with it. Careful you don't get addicted and end up buying a brand new Mac Pro.
January 2, 2014 11:20:00 AM

Ijack said:
Good news. Obviously, like all of us, it is feeling its age and needs a prod to wake up in the morning. Have fun with it. Careful you don't get addicted and end up buying a brand new Mac Pro.


Yeah it seems like it needs to have the OS reinstalled to make it work sometimes, but it's better than it was in that it actually works now. I'm happy with it, damn I wish I could get a new mac pro it kind of reminds me of the PowerMac G4 Cube with it's new design.
!