This has been a re-occurring problem for many Mac users trying to reformat a USB drive with Mac OS X Leopard or OS X Snow Leopard. It happens when the user is using the Disk Utility that comes with OS X 10.5 and 10.6, attempts to reformat a drive and Disk Utility spits out a scary error. In my case, it showed me a different error when I tried it the second time with a Tiger PowerMac G4. Anyway,  you might also get an error that looks like this:

There are many posts around the web offering different solutions that work for some, but not all. I found my own solution to reformat my drives in case they are giving me any problems, and it works great.

1. Download a stable version of GParted Live CD here http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/ it’s free. I would suggest you download version 0.4.8-6, and make sure it’s the ISO.

2. Burn it with Toast or other disc burning software. I have toast, so you simply drag the ISO to the Toast icon, and it prompts you to insert a CD, don’t use a DVD, it’s only over 100MB, so use a CD if you have any. Burn it.

3. You’re ready, mount the CD if you didn’t eject it after finished burning.

4. Open System Preferences: Startup Disk, and chose the system called Foreign OS on Gparted-live, then hit the Restart button.

5. Once your Mac is starting up from the GParted Live CD, it will prompt you for a couple things. Don’t panic, this has a Graphical interface, so it will be all pretty, and friendly to use.

6. On splash screen, as soon as it starts up, choose Gparted Live (Default Settings). Did I mention to use a USB keyboard for this? Wireless mouse worked, not wireless keyboard.

7. Next, you will see a Configuring console-data window. Choose the Don’t touch keymap

8. Type 33 for US English

9. Type the number 0 for Continue to start X to use Gparted automatically

10. You will see the OS finally popup after a few seconds in all it’s simple glory.

11. From here you can partition any drives, assign a File System etc. It’s very simple to use, and if you can use Disk Utility, you can use this, easy. Make sure after you make changes to the drive, press the Apply button. You can even undo in case you make a mistake. It’s awesome.

Once you’re done, click Exit twice, choose Reboot on the prompt, and it will boot up to your OS X, and you’re good to go. If you’re having issues starting up from your OS X disk, simply restart your Mac, hold down the Option key, wait for the Drives to pop up, and choose your OS X installation. Remember to be very careful.

I personally removed the Hard Drives I wasn’t working on from my Mac Pro, so I didn’t make any mistakes. And as always, BACK UP YOUR DATA.

About GParted

The GParted application is the GNOME partition editor for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions. A disk device can be subdivided into one or more partitions. The GParted application enables you to change the partition organization on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partitions.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php