MAC OS X: FORMATTING AN EXTERNAL DRIVE ON A MAC FOR USE WITH LINUX

Summary

This article explains how to format an external drive attached through various interfaces (USB, SATA, Firewire) in order to mount it onto a system running Red Hat Linux.

This procedure can also be used as a workaround for the 2 TB size limit in formating a drive with fdisk or older versions of gparted.

Warning: The following procedure is for informational purposes only and is not an Autodesk certified or supported workflow. Should issues arise with this procedure, they will not be addressed by Autodesk Customer Support.

Part I: Formatting the Drive on a Mac

Plug the external drive into a port on the Mac.

Open "Disk Utility" from Applications/Utilities/

Erase any partitions that are on the drive.

Go into the Partition menu and select "1 partition, Mac OS Extended".

NOTE: Do not select Journal or the partition will be read only on Linux systems.

Give the partition a name such as "HFS" (no spaces if using a composed name),and open the Options menu.

Select "Apple Partition Map" and click OK.

Once done, click Apply, eject the drive, and then unplug it from the Mac

Part II: Mounting the Drive on your Linux System

Use the following step to monitor the system to see if it recognizes the USB drive:

tail -f /var/log/messages

Plug the USB drive into the linux system and keep an eye on the "tail" window. You should see the device being used and a mount point should be created in /mnt:

Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using address 2
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: Vendor: Model: Memorex TD 2B Rev: PMAP
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: SCSI device sde: 2031616 512-byte hdwr sectors (1040 MB)
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: sde: Write Protect is off
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: sde: assuming drive cache: write through
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: sde: sde1
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sde at scsi8, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: Attached scsi generic sg4 at scsi8, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jun 2 16:04:23 newfoundland scsi.agent[4701]: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/0000:01:03.2/usb1/1-5/1-5:1.0/host8/target8:0:0/8:0:0:0
Jun 2 16:04:24 newfoundland fstab-sync[4749]: added mount point /mnt/HFS for /dev/sde3

NOTE: Press CTRL+C to break the "tail" command and return to the prompt.
Mount the drive by typing the following:

mount /mnt/HFS