EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymore

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mhschmieder
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EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymore

Post by mhschmieder »

This is an EXTREME emergency!

I just ran the latest Security Update for El Capitan tonight, and even after several reboots, my new 6TB Hitachi Ultrastar internal SATA drive is not seen as being mounted and available, no matter which tool I use to examine my system!

The drive was fine right before the Security Update. I bought it a few days ago, copied my 5TB library to it (sample library drive), and after a few reboots and direct gave me confidence all was well, proceeded to reformat the 5TB drive to use as my new Time Machine backup drive as my 3TB drive has been limiting for some time now.

Time Machine has been turned off this entire time, as I have two or three more "musical chairs" to play with various drives in order to get away from the edge of "disk full" on EVERY drive I have.

I don't know what to do when the drive isn't even seen as a "Volume" by the system.

I went to superuser mode in Terminal and that doesn't help. Furthermore, Terminal has changed now, but not in significant ways. Still, it's disconcerting. Something changed about the file system for sure! And yet I thought that wasn't supposed to kick in unless upgrading to Sierra.
Last edited by mhschmieder on Sat Oct 29, 2016 12:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

I got lucky with my search criteria, as someone else has experienced the EXACT same problem, except with a 2012 (vs. 2011) MacPro:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/71 ... 0&tstart=0

I am multi-tasking at the moment as I MUST continue swapping my other drives so that I am done with all disc copies by the time the internet technician comes at 8am to try to diagnose my ongoing network issues.

So I can't power down my computer at the moment to try the tricks mentioned in that article. But it does explain why my first reboot worked and my second one didn't, as I was still in the phase of disc swaps at that point in time and thus had adjusted the drives in their trays once.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

Ironically, I went with Hitachi again when I bought this 6TB drive, for far more money than the equivalent Toshiba drive ($400 vs. $200), due to some bad experience with cheaper Toshiba drives. For one thing, they are very thin, and don't work very well in external drive trays for backup purposes.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

A bit further down on that problem report:

Hitachi support said "Based on the configuration you are using, it seems that the 6TB disk doesn't have enough time to spin up on reboot in comparison with the 3 and 4 TB disks. The firmware update is not related to this issue, it is more a capacity related issue."

I haven't had a chance to really soak in and analyze everything said at that site yet, but it appears I may have been better off using two 3TB partitions instead of one 6TB partition.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/71 ... 0&tstart=0

As for the drive sled mounting issue, one of the reasons I went with Hitachi vs. Toshiba is that the former did not say it needs the new drive sled from OWC and so that seemed like less of a risk -- especially as this drive upgrade was extremely time sensitive and couldn't withstand the need for a second followup order of accessories.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

Based on OWC's description, it might be a good idea to go for the newer drive sled after all, as it seems to increase contact reliability for both major configurations (old/legacy and new such as WD and Toshiba drives of the past year or two):

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/

I don't know how long it would take to arrive, but I may order one or two of those tonight, and then when my main Master drive for audio projects has finished copying from an almost-full 2TB drive to the 3TB drive former allocated to Time Machine, try a cold reboot with the drive reinsertion hint on the 6TB drive.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

Several people feel that Logical Volume Groups are not the cause of the drive not being seen, and that it is more likely to be due to drive alignment issues.

I seem to recall that this happened once with the 5TB Toshiba drive, until I swapped to another drive bay thinking that might make a difference. Probably it did, but likely only due to alignment issues and not because of any bias in boot order of one bay over another (in reference to the theory that the problem is related to extra boot time required for drives larger than 4TB).
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by James Steele »

Ugh... I feel bad for you! I hope you get it sorted out. :(
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Re: EMERGENCY: Latest El Capitan security update hides 6TB d

Post by mhschmieder »

Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and order two of those OWC replacement drive sleds regardless, as I now have one 6TB internal drive and one 5TB internal drive and as the screws have started dethreading on the other two drive sleds anyway.

I figure it's good to have backups for the drive sleds. Maybe I'll even order four just for future-proofing. Some have suggested it's good also for speedier drive transfers between backups and mains or between two computers.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Deskstar 6TB drive won't mount anymor

Post by mhschmieder »

I've changed the title as the El Capitan Security Update from tonight seems incidental to the situation and simply a coincidence that it was right before my second reboot with the new drive, which is when others report problems starting to occur.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Deskstar 6TB drive won't mount anymor

Post by mhschmieder »

I ended up ordering four OWC drive sleds, as you get free shipping that way and it's best to have backups for all of them as the originals from Apple have flimsy screws and washers.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Deskstar 6TB drive won't mount anymor

Post by mhschmieder »

Pulling out the drive sled and reinserting it (while the computer cable was detached) did the trick.

Likely my next reboot will fail to see the 6TB drive yet again though. I think switching to the OWC drive sled when it arrives is well advised. I certainly don't want to have to do this trick every time I boot the computer!

I can't test that theory right now as I am still in the midst of doing massive backups of all of my internal drives after all the swaperoos to larger drives, as my backups are incomplete at the moment so I'm going to designate an overflow drive for the remainder.

If drive prices finally come down at some point (they've been static -- or even rising -- for almost two years now), I may buy another large drive, consolidate my backups (though I maintain three generations of backups for data; I only keep one generation for sample libraries), and sell all my 1TB (and maybe also 2TB) drives.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymo

Post by mhschmieder »

I seem to be in the clear now, but I'm glad I ordered those OWC drive trays anyway.

Two reboots so far, without the 6TB Hitachi Ultrastar drive failing to mount.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymo

Post by James Steele »

Good news that it's working!
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymo

Post by mhschmieder »

The problem came back a couple of days ago. It seems to happen roughly 3 out of 4 times, unless I do the trick of removing power, taking out the drive tray and reinserting.

I haven't driven to work in two months now so haven't brought home the OWC drive trays which arrived a few days ago. It didn't seem pressing as everything was fine all week until late Friday.

I'm wondering if it's network related, as there seems to be a direct correspondence to when the 6 TB drive won't mount and when the network is hosed?

I had to have a technician out again this morning as my network went down again yesterday afternoon and wouldn't come back. Turned out to be wiring problems outside the house, amongst other things, so the modem/router wasn't the only problem, even though that did help last week.
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Re: EMERGENCY: Hitachi Ultrastar 6TB drive won't mount anymo

Post by mhschmieder »

My theory seems to have been correct, as the only time the 6TB drive has failed to mount since I last posted was the one time this week where I had a brief internet hiccup during bootup.

As this is not set up as a network drive, it makes no sense, unless there is a NAS capability that tries to bootstrap at startup before getting to the stage of determining normal internal drive init.

I still haven't driven to work in a couple of months so haven't brought the order from OWC home yet.

Not sure now if I'll bother replacing the drive sled rather than keeping all four of them as backups in case things go wrong later on.
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