Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as HD

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mhschmieder
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Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as HD

Post by mhschmieder »

I thought I'd seen it all by now.

I tried installing and initializing my new Toshiba 5 TB SATA tonight, using Disk Utility. I have never ever had problems with a drive until now. Simple foolproof operation, right?

Well, after initializing via Erase and the default settings (OS X, Journaled, Fast vs. Secure), both the hard drive and its single Volume/Partition got my name "Library" instead of just the Volume/Partition.

At that point, the drive can no longer be erased -- only the Volume/Partition can be erased. And it shows slightly over 1 GB of files on it, which won't erase, and can't be seen even as superuser via Terminal.

I also thought it strange that the hard drive didn't identify its capacity anywhere on the drive. This is the first drive I've ever bought that doesn't do that. Its actual type is "TOSHIBA MD04ACA500 Media".

Anyway, rather than seeing this label, and the options to erase/etc. at that level of the drive structure, Disk Utilities (even after a reboot of my Mac) says its name is "Library", its type is "Logical Volume Group" and that its status is "Online", with 0 Bytes available (due to all 5 TB being allocated to the single Volume that is also called "Library".

I have never ever seen that information layout before for any drive I have ever installed and/or initialized.

As there are so few options in Disk Utility, I chose the "Erase Free Space..." option, which keeps increasing its time estimate even while it is working away, and now is up to 4 hours... and I haven't even started copying my old 4 TB almost-full library drive (renamed to "Library-Backup") yet.

Is there some possibility that using a name that was previously used by another drive -- even though I renamed that drive first -- caused this new drive to go into this weird mode of becoming a Logical Volume Group?

I can't "Skip" the "Erase Free Space..." BTW as it prevents me from performing any further actions on the drive -- they all become blocked due to corruption and non-recoverability of files that I don't even want to begin with.

I suppose I could have just gone ahead and "let it be" and started the copy of the 4 TB of data to the new 5 TB drive, but given how long that will take, I felt it safer to suss out this mystery first. And now that I've taken an action or two towards figuring it out or resolving it, I'm locked in to seeing it through as the current operation can't be canceled.
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mhschmieder
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Re: Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as

Post by mhschmieder »

I decided to skip the rest of the "Erase Free Space..." operation anyway, due to how long it would take, but that of course made it impossible to erase or format the disk afresh.

I gave up at that point, wondering if I had corrupted some files that maybe all hard drives ship with that are necessary for initial formatting to operate.

Instead, I decided to use Disk Utility to "Restore" the new drive as the Destination for my original 4 TB Library drive as the Source.

This is probably slower than a direct copy, as it is giving me an 11 hour estimate, and I would expect a maximum of 6 hours for 4 TB of data via internal SATA.

Anyway, I guess I'll be in suspense until that operation is done.

Maybe at that point, a reboot will successfully get the disk itself to identify as TOSHIBA vs. "Library" after another OS X reboot.
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mhschmieder
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Re: Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as

Post by mhschmieder »

OK, I got impatient due to not wanting to wait 11 hours and having to start over if it did the wrong thing. So I rebooted after canceling the Restore action.

At this point, the disk was still named "Library" and still identified as a Logical Volume Group, but could be Repaired, and had an Untitled Volume which I could then Erase as "Library".

After this action, the "Library" Volume has 57 files using 1.31 GB. I guess this is probably just the normal stuff that the file system needs; whereas earlier I thought it was unwanted stuff that Toshiba had installed on the drive (this most often happens with flash drives though).

Anyway, the Volume lists its format as "Logical Partition" instead of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" even though I formatted it as the latter.

If I erase it yet again, it goes down to 3 files and 6 folders but the same 1.31 GB of disk space used.

If I go back to the Disk level and click the Info icon in the tool bar, it lists the Physical Backing as "disk5s2"; whereas for my other hard disks, it lists the Type as "Disk" and has all sorts of information, including which Bay it is in (something my new drive won't do).

Could it be that everything I am experiencing is due to addressing space of 64-bit systems and maybe exceeding the normal reach of short or long pointers for file references, thus forcing the system to go to a new strategy?

This is, after all, the first time I have installed a drive larger than 4 TB.
iMac 27" 2017 Quad-Core Intel i5 (3.8 GHz, 64 GB), OSX 13.6.1, MOTU DP 11.31, iZotope RX 10
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Re: Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as

Post by mhschmieder »

Looks like the individual copies will take 11 hours, based on my 2.5 TB of Kontakt libraries giving a 6 hour estimate. So using "Restore" to "clone" my old Library drive to my new one might have been just as good (if not better) as doing it piecemeal via the Finder as I am now doing.

I think probably everything is fine, and I just got thrown by encountering for the first time, the upper limits of addressing for 64-bit systems (I'm too tired to do that math right now). I had read about this at one point, but didn't really understand how, and at what level of the drive hierarchy, the system would present its virtual layers that allow for full addressing of the drive.
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Re: Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as

Post by monkey man »

Back when I had my license, I'd drive to whichever address I liked on an as-needed basis. Just sayin'.

Lucky you were here to answer your posts, Mark. I don't know what you'd have done without you.

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