There are at least two reasons for the occurrence of the 'Not ready' response in my experience. One is that the drive, although partitioned according to Apple, has a damaged driver which the current disk utility is unable either to handshake with or to overwrite with a new driver. The second is that the partition scheme is so foreign to Apple's that the disk utility cannot recognize it as a 'file system'. Rather than repeat them, I refer you to
http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4811 and
http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1341
InTech's HDST, FWB's HDTK and LaCie's Silverlining will not always 'take over' a drive that does not already have the Apple partition scheme, and the possibility exists that a 36GB has been formatted previously with a Unix-friendly partition scheme. This is not an infrequent happening with 50-pin and SCA 80-pin' pre-loved' drives that were previously used in a server environment. If the logic board of the drive shows one or more patch wires, it is even more possibly the case.
However, if a utility (such as Silverlining) has a GUI that details all of the present drives/volumes and buses, it may also allow you to force a temporary mount for long enough to replace a defective driver. If you can get that far, it may then be possible to reformat the drive to your taste. In extremis, there is also the specialist get-hold-of-the-@#$%&!-thing utility Mt. Everything.
de
http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4811 and
http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1341
InTech's HDST, FWB's HDTK and LaCie's Silverlining will not always 'take over' a drive that does not already have the Apple partition scheme, and the possibility exists that a 36GB has been formatted previously with a Unix-friendly partition scheme. This is not an infrequent happening with 50-pin and SCA 80-pin' pre-loved' drives that were previously used in a server environment. If the logic board of the drive shows one or more patch wires, it is even more possibly the case.
However, if a utility (such as Silverlining) has a GUI that details all of the present drives/volumes and buses, it may also allow you to force a temporary mount for long enough to replace a defective driver. If you can get that far, it may then be possible to reformat the drive to your taste. In extremis, there is also the specialist get-hold-of-the-@#$%&!-thing utility Mt. Everything.
de