Problem formatting a 1.1TB partition

[feriso]

I have recently purchased a 1.5TB drive and what I was planning to do was to clone my Win7 install onto the start of the drive and then the remainder (~1.1TB) will be formatted in HFS+ for use a scratch disk for my HD video work with FCE/P & AE.

 

Now cloning the win7 drive has been done but when I boot into SL and try and format the 1.1TB partition (currently NTFS) it throws up an error saying unable to format drive please run First Aid, but under First Aid the check and verify are not enabled (not surprising since it is an NTFS drive)

 

Now my current HD arrangement is

 

320GB - Old XP+docs

250GB - Org Win7

500GB - SL

1.5TB - New Win7 + 1.1TB parition

 

So am I missing something in being able to reformat that 1.1TB partition into HFS+, or is it to do with the fact that it is on MBR rather than GUID (iirc)?

 

Could it be that the simplest/best way to solve this is to swap it about so I have Win7 on my 500GB drive and then have the entire 1.5TB drive in GUID with SL and then a separate partition for the scratch disk?

 

TIA

[srs5694]

I suggest you try the following, in order, stopping when something works:

 

1. In Windows, format the 1.1TB partition to FAT, then reboot into OS X and reformat it for HFS+.
   
2. Use a low-level partitioning tool, such as OS X's fdisk or Linux's fdisk, to change the partition type code of the 1.1TB partition to 0xAF (decimal 175). This is the code for HFS+ volumes, so with any luck that'll work around whatever problem you're seeing in OS X.
   
3. Use a Linux emergency disc such as Parted Magic or System Rescue CD to create the HFS+ filesystem on the 1.1TB partition. I'm not positive that both of those discs include HFS+ support, but I'm pretty sure that at least one does. The tool is called mkfs.hfsplus, and you'd call it like "mkfs.hfsplus /dev/sdb2" on the command line. You should use fdisk to be sure you provide the right device and partition -- you can easily wipe out important data if you make a mistake!