Fix Mac formating error: "File System formatter failed"


Apple Inc provide Disk Utility tool, which is a multipurpose program for working with hard disks, DVDs, CDs, disk images etc. You can use this utility to perform disk mounting, disk erasing, disabling or enabling disk journaling, verifying and repairing disk. If you use Disk Utility in Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard to format or delete a volume, you might see unexpected error like "File system formatter failed". You may also receive the error when you try to change even the file system of a particular Mac OSX hard drive volume or external Mac hard drive.



If you have stored plenty of data in your hard drive and needs to change file system to access, then its critical problem with you. Until you fix file system formatter failed Mac error, you won't be able to access the hard drive. The common reason of the error is incompatibility of the Leopard's Disk Utility with partitions scheme which is used by Mac OSX Leopard operating system. The utility may also fail in case the partition table of Mac OS is corrupted. In this case, you need to resolve the Disk utility error to make your external Mac drive accessible.


In order to fix “File system formatter failed” error, you need to repartition the Mac hard drive. But partitioning erases the all the stored contents from the drive therefore you need to make backup of your data then try to create partition. If you are unable to backup the data, you will need Mac data recovery software to recover the lost data after partition. Try the following steps:


  1. Open 'Disk Utility'
  2. Select the disk required for partition
  3. Click on 'Partition' tab under the Disk Utility window
  4. Select the number of partitions from the pop-up menu
  5. Click 'Options'
  6. Set required partition size and click 'Partition'

If you are using Intel-based Mac then you will not see the Options button. Hence, you will need to use erase tab to erase the disk. This will change the partition scheme to default GUID Partition Scheme. After that select 'GUID Partition Scheme' from the Partition Scheme pop-up menu and click OK. Now you can make any changes like Volume Information, partition size. Click the 'Partition' button to erase your disk and install the new partition scheme.


After you have finished creating partition, you can use the drive to install Mac OSX or store any data. You can now restore the backup to the partitioned volume. In case, you couldn't backup the data, you will need to go for Mac Data Recovery software. The software recovers all the lost data from formatted Mac hard drives.


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