TM drive not seen; causes Disk Utility to spin
Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:52 pm
I've already tried hours worth of suggestions from Apple's site and other places, including booting in Safe Mode, removing all Login Items, etc.
As everyone knows, I have had one issue or another with Time Machine almost non-stop since buying the 2017 iMac and suddenly being forced back into using external drives for most stuff, and via USB 3 and/or USB-C.
By plugging the G-Tech 10 TB drive directly into the back of the iMac, I eliminated most, but not all of the problems, such as disc sleep during TM backups, causing a disconnect and a nightmare trying (even in sudo mode) to remove the failed backup.
Last night, I had to quit the cleanup action as I had to get to bed and be up for an early meeting. Maybe I should have left everything on overnight, but storms were expected. I seem to have been partially successful using Unix in the Terminal to delete the failed backup. But that action did not complete when I killed Terminal's process and shut down for the night.
That was the first time TM had failed mid-stream, since I switched to directly connecting it to the back of the iMac vs. using even the new Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) hub from OWC (which seems to have no way to defeat sleep mode, and even doesn't know when things are being used and thus shouldn't be put to sleep). Probably because it was the biggest recent backup.
Anyway, when I booted tonight, the Time Machine drive icon on my desktop was there but dimmed. Disk Utility showed the drive but not the partition. I've also never been successful in making multiple partitions on that drive, but that's another matter entirely.
Following suggestions I found on-line, made matters worse, or they just got worse on their own. Disk Utility spins its wheels no matter what order I do things in (all devices off at startup, etc.), if the TM drive is turned on. I even turned off TM and removed that drive as available to TM, to no avail.
The System Report shows the G-Tech drive no problem. I was hoping I could get Disk Utility to show it again so I could see whether the Mount button would work, but after eight reboots and different tactics, I still can't see the TM drive (much less the partition) anbymore in Disk Utility.
The one thing I do notice in System Report, is that my sample library drive, which is the exact same G-Tech model, lists the Available Space and the Writable flag under the Capacity information, in the info group for the partition. It also lists the Mount Point. All three items are currently missing for the Time Machine partition on the other G-Tech drive (but weren't way earlier). I even tried swapping the power cables and USB cables.
The other newly changed information under System Report, is that the bookkeeping partition used by the disk managers is quite different now. For the Library drive, it says "disk5s1" at 209.7 MB Capacity, with "disk5s1" as the BSD Name and "EFI" as the Content. The Time Machine drive shows it as "EFI", Capacity 209.7 MB, MS-DOS FAT32 File System, BSD Name = "disk4s1", Content = "EFI", and a Volume UUID!
Maybe I didn't notice that detail earlier. I suspect it's behind many, if not all, of the problems I've had with the Time Machine drive since I bought it. Maybe there was something done incorrectly with this drive at the factory, even though I bought two identical boxes?
The most important thing now though, is to find out how I can access the drive, much less the partition, so that whatever I learn on-line or is suggested to me, can at least be tried, as now I'm dead in the water after eight tries that have if anything taken me further from a solution.
I guess I should be thankful that it was my Time Machine drive and not my Library drive though. I do have full, and recent, standalone backups, at least. I was annoyed enough when my hard-won resurrection of that drive around the holidays, sacrificed all prior backups from when I bought the iMac last July.
As everyone knows, I have had one issue or another with Time Machine almost non-stop since buying the 2017 iMac and suddenly being forced back into using external drives for most stuff, and via USB 3 and/or USB-C.
By plugging the G-Tech 10 TB drive directly into the back of the iMac, I eliminated most, but not all of the problems, such as disc sleep during TM backups, causing a disconnect and a nightmare trying (even in sudo mode) to remove the failed backup.
Last night, I had to quit the cleanup action as I had to get to bed and be up for an early meeting. Maybe I should have left everything on overnight, but storms were expected. I seem to have been partially successful using Unix in the Terminal to delete the failed backup. But that action did not complete when I killed Terminal's process and shut down for the night.
That was the first time TM had failed mid-stream, since I switched to directly connecting it to the back of the iMac vs. using even the new Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) hub from OWC (which seems to have no way to defeat sleep mode, and even doesn't know when things are being used and thus shouldn't be put to sleep). Probably because it was the biggest recent backup.
Anyway, when I booted tonight, the Time Machine drive icon on my desktop was there but dimmed. Disk Utility showed the drive but not the partition. I've also never been successful in making multiple partitions on that drive, but that's another matter entirely.
Following suggestions I found on-line, made matters worse, or they just got worse on their own. Disk Utility spins its wheels no matter what order I do things in (all devices off at startup, etc.), if the TM drive is turned on. I even turned off TM and removed that drive as available to TM, to no avail.
The System Report shows the G-Tech drive no problem. I was hoping I could get Disk Utility to show it again so I could see whether the Mount button would work, but after eight reboots and different tactics, I still can't see the TM drive (much less the partition) anbymore in Disk Utility.
The one thing I do notice in System Report, is that my sample library drive, which is the exact same G-Tech model, lists the Available Space and the Writable flag under the Capacity information, in the info group for the partition. It also lists the Mount Point. All three items are currently missing for the Time Machine partition on the other G-Tech drive (but weren't way earlier). I even tried swapping the power cables and USB cables.
The other newly changed information under System Report, is that the bookkeeping partition used by the disk managers is quite different now. For the Library drive, it says "disk5s1" at 209.7 MB Capacity, with "disk5s1" as the BSD Name and "EFI" as the Content. The Time Machine drive shows it as "EFI", Capacity 209.7 MB, MS-DOS FAT32 File System, BSD Name = "disk4s1", Content = "EFI", and a Volume UUID!
Maybe I didn't notice that detail earlier. I suspect it's behind many, if not all, of the problems I've had with the Time Machine drive since I bought it. Maybe there was something done incorrectly with this drive at the factory, even though I bought two identical boxes?
The most important thing now though, is to find out how I can access the drive, much less the partition, so that whatever I learn on-line or is suggested to me, can at least be tried, as now I'm dead in the water after eight tries that have if anything taken me further from a solution.
I guess I should be thankful that it was my Time Machine drive and not my Library drive though. I do have full, and recent, standalone backups, at least. I was annoyed enough when my hard-won resurrection of that drive around the holidays, sacrificed all prior backups from when I bought the iMac last July.