Bizarre issue w/ new Toshiba 5TB refusing to identify as HD
Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:28 pm
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.
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.