I later found some additional background advice on this topic from other users: it seems that there’s some incompatibility introduced in Leopard that prevents Mac OS X from talking over certain USB drive interfaces.īased on comments and discussions all over Mac sites dating back to the release of 10.5 Leopard, you have three choices: GUID Partition Table is generally the right choice for Intel-based Macs.) (An unrelated but widely discussed issue was that you might need to change the partition type from Apple Partition Map to GUID Partition Table in the Partition view’s Options dialog in Disk Utility.

I was able to erase and partition at will. I dug out a FireWire cable, plugged it in, and all was golden. Cannot allocate memory.” Thank you so very much for such clear and comprehensible error messages, Apple.Īfter 45 minutes of Googling and grumbling, I finally realized that the Iomega enclosure had both FireWire 400 and USB 2 interfaces. “Well,” thought I, “let’s try formatting with Snow Leopard’s version of Disk Utility.” It was infinitely helpful, providing a dialog that read: “Disk Erase failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Apple has no advice on the topic in its massive KnowledgeBase, either. Lynn’s MacBook is still running Leopard, and despite trying many, many pieces of advice scattered across the Internet, Disk Utility continually told me, “Disk erase failed: input/output error.” How useful. Of course, this is when Disk Utility told me it couldn’t format an external Iomega 300 GB drive I had brought home from the office for the backup task. Finally the kids passed out, and I moved on to backing up Lynn’s hard drive with SuperDuper the battery-charging circuitry was failing again in her MacBook despite an Apple fix, and she needed to take it into the Genius Bar again. I was already tired, and then my generally lovely boys gave me a hard time bathing and getting to bed while my wife, Lynn, was out.

#1603: Replacing a 27-inch iMac, Luna Display turns a 27-inch iMac into a 5K display, OWC's affordable Thunderbolt 4 cables.

#1604: Universal Control how-to, show proxy icons in Monterey, Eat Your Books cookbook index.

#1605: OS updates with security and bug fixes, April Fools article retrospective, Audio Hijack 4, 5G home Internet.

#1606: Apple's self-sabotaging App Store policies, edit Slack messages easily, WWDC 2022 dates.

#1607: TidBITS 32nd anniversary, moving from 1Password to KeePass, pasting plain text, Mail fixes anchor links, RIP Eolake.

Disk utility won t let me erase