Format External USB Drive

[xparrot]

Thanks for adding me to the site.

I just purchased a used iMac G3 (Blueberry) from eBay. It fires up and seems to have once been a unit used in a school by the software on there.

It has been 17 years since I have used OS9 so I am rusty to say the least.

My first task: A way to transfer files from my current OS High Sierra machine to the iMac. I thought an external USB hard drive, but the iMac is not recognizing it. So I thought I should reformat the external USB 500GB drive. The current Disk Utility in high sierra does not seem to allow unjournaled formatting which I think I need.

I tried Drive Setup on the iMac, but the external USB drive does not show up as something that can be formatted. Is there 3rd party software I can use to format the external drive so that is recognized by the iMac? Or, how would you do it?

[xparrot]

Perhaps there is something on this iMac preventing external hard drives since this appears to have once been a school iMac. I am not against reformatting the iMac and reinstalling OS9, but when I restart and hold down C, the iMac will not boot from the OS 9 Install CD.

[IIO]

journalled is not the problem but one level deeper: a G3 can not do anything with a drive formatted with AFPS & GUID.

for OS9 and OSX 10.4.11 volumes should be HFS+.

USF and DOS will also be recognized, but eventually you lose resource forks and long names when copying files onto it.

also note that the maximum physical drive size may not exceed 2 TB.

just format your usb drive using the imac and all all should be ok.

[IIO]

the iMac will not boot from the OS 9 Install CD.

higher classsic than 9.0.1 might not be supported without tricks, too.

otherwise: caps lock down? it must be a small "c".

and if c doesnt work, try the boot manager ([alt]) and seee what happens.

[xparrot]

I would like to format the external 500GB USB drive via the iMac. But as I said, it does not show in anyway when plugged into the iMac. Should I format in some special way via my OS High Sierra machine?

I got the iMac to boot from the OS9 install disc. It took several minutes of holding the lower case "c" down, but it finally did. Patience is not something I am overflowing with, so I think the other attempts failed because I released the "c" too soon.

I am going to reformat the internal hard drive and reinstall OS9 to get rid of old software/viruses and start clean. This will most likely take an hour or two.

Once I have a clean version OS9 installed, what utility should I use to format the external drive?

[xparrot]

Okay, over one hurdle. I have wiped the iMac's hard drive and installed a fresh copy of OS 9.0.4. I have an update disk for 9.1, but for some reason, when I insert a CD-ROM I have two options: Eject or Initialize. I was only able to get the OS 9.0.4 CD to show when I put it in the drive and restarted. 

I would still like to know how I can format an external USB 500GB drive so that it is recognized on OS9.

If I open Drive Setup the USB drive does not show. What do I need to do? Or is the drive too modern to ever be used by the iMac using OS9?

[IIO]

But as I said, it does not show in anyway when plugged into the iMac.

ok i see.

well, it could be that your USB enclosure does not allow to connect to USB 1.1 somehow.

it doesnt make much sense anyway except for exceptional situations, but most enclosures/controllers would still work.

Once I have a clean version OS9 installed, what utility should I use to format the external drive?

the "disc utlility" of OS9 is called "drive setup" - and by default is it located in some silly location like the apple menu or the extras folder.

it supports SCSI, ATA, firewire and usb 1 (and all possible cardbus and PCI solutions)

there is no choice for filesystem and there is HFS and HFS+; you are going to choose the latter.

you might see the usb drive there listed (as unreadable) even when there was no icon popping up on the desktop before.

OS9 also doenst have any usb warning messages for HDs, only missing device drivers will end up in a notification to the user.

[FdB]

I’ve got a Seagate 500 GB external USB 2 drive that I formatted HFS+ on an MDD using a USB 2 card via OSX. The drive has always been problematic and I’ve rarely been able to get it to mount on a G3. (Especially a B&W G3.) AND, if it can’t see the drive how are you going to format it with the iMac? Considered recommending Firewire to you but your early iMac does not have? (Late 1999-2000 for Firewire.)

And, I do wonder what files / programs you may want to move from an OS High Sierra machine to an early iMac? Surely a USB thumb drive formatted on the iMac (USB 1.0) would accomplish a sort of “sneaker net” for the transfer of such things… should there actually be something of a large size that would transfer to the early iMac?

Maybe even an ethernet crossover cable should be considered? But again… what do you need to transfer of any “large size” to the OS 9 based iMac that you couldn’t accomplish with an 8 to 16 to 32GB 1.0 USB thumb drive? Maybe more information is needed?

Now, if you’re looking for a somewhat dedicated external drive for the iMac… you might simply need to use another type of drive.

[xparrot]

The reason I bought the iMac is to get stuff off of Retrospect 4 and 6. The latest Retrospect does not support those. I have Retrospect installed on the iMac. I just need a way to get the old StorageSet onto the Mac or an external drive. I tried a thumb drive and that showed up as <not supported> on the iMac Drive Setup app. Looked into ethernet sharing, but not having much luck with that either. I have a Shared folder on the iMac. Tried connecting via afp://IP but not connecting. Frustrating. Someway, somehow, I am gonna either get a USB drive or stick working or connect via Ethernet.

[xparrot]

I upgraded from OS 9.0.4 to OS 9.1 (found another old 9.1 install disc that the iMac recognized). Still could not format the USB external drive. HOWEVER, I was able to initialize a USB Thumb drive that previously could not be read. That thumb drive is recognizable on the iMac OS 9.1 AND my Max OS High Sierra. So I can finally start attempting to get stuff off backup.

[FdB]

GREAT! I'd just prepared a long "back to the base" iMac
OS software install post. Glad you don't need that.

[RossDarker]

If you ever do need to initialise a disk from High Sierra you can use the terminal to make APM disks still.

Code: [Select]

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 APM HFS+ TheDisk 0b
where disk3 is replaced by what the external disk is, that you would find by

Code: [Select]

diskutil list
And then both OS's will recognise the disk. It will show up on either desktop of the machines, and you can read & write to the disk from either OS.

[darthnVader]

If you ever do need to initialise a disk from High Sierra you can use the terminal to make APM disks still.

Code: [Select]

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 APM HFS+ TheDisk 0b
where disk3 is replaced by what the external disk is, that you would find by

Code: [Select]

diskutil list
And then both OS's will recognise the disk. It will show up on either desktop of the machines, and you can read & write to the disk from either OS.

That's really the best way to do it, but keep in mind that OS 9 supports a maximum partition size of 128Gb. Drive Setup doesn't really like USB drives, tho the classic Mac OS will prompt you to eject or initialize a disk at boot time if it can't read it, it's not part of Drive Setup, it's part of the OS, however I don't think it will allow you to create partitions.

Likely, this was the trouble you were having with a 500Gb drive. It would need to be partitioned.

Under OS X, Applications>Utilities>Terminal.

Code: [Select]

diskutil list

Code: [Select]

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk1 2 OS9Drivers HFS+ MacHD 128000M JHFS+ OSXHD R


That would give you two parftitions, on named MacHD formated HFS+ with a size of 128Gb, and another named OSXHD formated JHFS+ that used the remainder of the drive. As noted, replace /dev/disk1 with the disk number of the drive you want to partition.   

Likely you can replace 128000M with 128G, I haven't tested it, but it should work.

[RossDarker]

I guess that would work for 10.5 and below because the OS9Drivers thing is no longer part of diskutil in later OS X. But yeah that is good if you have access to 10.5 or below.

[darthnVader]

I guess that would work for 10.5 and below because the OS9Drivers thing is no longer part of diskutil in later OS X. But yeah that is good if you have access to 10.5 or below.

Thanks, I wasn't sure. Tho that's only necessary if someone wants to boot OS 9 from the USB drive, and I do that from time to time.

So long as we can still make the Apple Partition Map required, it's all good.

[macStuff]

you guys do realize it is very much not -reccommended to use USB storage devices with mac os 9?

i could reccommend you get a "hard drive dock" that has both firewire + usb
> firewire 400 / usb 2.0 is good enough
> firewire 800 / usb 3.0 will cost more

i have many many many times reccommended to people on the site here that gigabit ethernet speed can actually
outperform firewire, and that using a NAS4FREE Appleshare AFP server for your files on your local network and mapping
the network share as a network drive can give better performance over firewire but noone was ready to listen to that truth
as long as u are using gigabit ethernet capable interface card + switch + cat 5e cable or better you will get great speeds
that outperform firewire or usb

see these many threads where i tried to present this as a "goto" option for storage
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2236.msg12040.html
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2591.msg15355.html
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1140.msg4462.html
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,3714.msg27908.html
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2582.msg15286.html
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,978.msg11913.html

[IIO]

Maybe even an ethernet crossover cable should be considered? But again… what do you need to transfer of any “large size” to the OS 9 based iMac that you couldn’t accomplish with an 8 to 16 to 32GB 1.0 USB thumb drive?

give that USB 1 is about as slow as 100mbit ethernet, using a network connection seems easier.

then again, you dont know what exactly he is doing.

and we should really have the attitude to learn more about USB attached storage media because the day when USB 2 works for classic comes closer.

[IIO]

HOWEVER, I was able to initialize a USB Thumb drive that previously could not be read

yeah stick is easier, they almost all work. and if you format it with the "DOS" option in OSX, it can be used with OS9 and OSX - and windows as well.

[IIO]

I guess that would work for 10.5 and below because the OS9Drivers thing is no longer part of diskutil in later OS X. But yeah that is good if you have access to 10.5 or below.

good thinking, but is that necessary? i recently attached a DOS formatted disk from a 10.12 machine, which deefineeklty had no OS9 dirvers on it -  to an OS9 machine and it did not only show it, the disk was ready to use.

so, as you guessed ... that was via firewire. why wouldnt that work with USB.

[xparrot]

Thanks everyone.

I seem to have finally gotten to a place where I can work on retrieving these backups. Was up till 3am trying a bunch of different stuff and WAITING. Really spoiled with my 12-core Mac Pro. Boy this old iMac is slow. I'm sure at the time we all considered it speedy.

I have an old USB Hub, I assume they work in OS 9.1?

I was able to copy Retrospect 4 Storage Sets to the thumb drive and copy them onto the iMac.