jake10e

Q: Disk Utility defaulted to Logical Volume Group format for new 4TB HDD and won't let me change to GUID. Is that a problem?

I just installed a 4TB HGST HDD in the 4th bay of my mid-2010 mac pro (2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel). I formatted the drive using Disk Utility's "Erase" tab as Mac OS Extended Journaled and the drive seems to be working fine (set up as Time Machine backup).  It is recognizing the full 4TB capacity and the first backup in TM took a long time but all the files are there.  However, my understanding is that all drives intended for use solely in my mac should ideally be formatted to GUID.  The problem is that Disk Utility formatted the drive to a Logical Volume Group/Logical Partition, so it's not allowing me to change the format type now i.e. when I go to the "Partition" tab in Disk Utility, all of the options are greyed out.  Also, the RAID tab does not appear for this drive as it does for the other three 1TB drives installed.

 

So my ultimate question is this - is it a problem that I can't reformat to GUID?  If so, why is it a problem and how do I fix it?

 

Thanks!

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Aug 19, 2013 12:23 AM

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Q: Disk Utility defaulted to Logical Volume Group format for new 4TB HDD and won't let me change to GUID. Is that a problem?

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  • by sam410,

    sam410 sam410 Apr 3, 2014 2:59 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 3, 2014 2:59 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    Thanks, glad to hear it's working for you.  However I've now reformatted the slow drive under Mountain Lion as an LVG, but it is still very slow!

     

    To copy a 1.25GB folder with 300-odd jpg files takes 25s on one drive but 25 minutes on the other. Could that be down to format issues, or could the drive be faulty?

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Apr 3, 2014 8:21 AM in response to sam410
    Level 5 (4,850 points)
    Apr 3, 2014 8:21 AM in response to sam410

    I don't think it's the disparity in formatting because all of my drives were originally formatted in Lion or Snow Leopard and they've worked properly when booted from Mountain Lion or Mavericks (hooray for four drive bays!).

     

    I'd be more suspicious of the drive itself. Using Activity Monitor for measuring file transfer rate, what happens when you copy a large file (I use a Debian virtual machine because it's big enough to get a sense of the speed over time) to each 4TB drive?

     

    BTW, I assume SMART status is OK for both drives (Disk Utility won't show SMART for the LVG, but System Information will).

  • by Engender,

    Engender Engender Apr 4, 2014 3:56 PM in response to SnipperJS
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Apr 4, 2014 3:56 PM in response to SnipperJS

    Thank you so much! This kept me from calling Western Digital like an idiot and saying "the replacement drive you sent me (which was 2.5 TB to replace my 2 TB HD, for whatever reason) doesn't work!"

  • by gmarinov,

    gmarinov gmarinov Apr 11, 2014 7:41 AM in response to jake10e
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Apr 11, 2014 7:41 AM in response to jake10e

    I'll just put this in for anyone like me who, for one reason or another, won't use the install DVD method. Do at your own risk. The instructions are only valid for a newly inserted blank hard drive that has had one partition created on it. Don't hold me responsible, I've tested them on mine a few times. As I said, at your own risk.

     

    • In Disk Utility, unmount the erroneous volume
    • Open Terminal
    • sudo su - (it's the minus sign, and then enter your password)
    • diskutil cs list
    • in the list, find the Physical Volume branch under the Logical Volume Group diskutil created for you - that would be a "Disk:   diskXsY"  kind of line e.g. disk5s2.
    • Back in Disk Utility, click on all of your drives one by one, then on Info, and verify that the disk identifier of each is NOT diskX above. You don't want to wipe another drive by mistake.
    • go back to Terminal and in the following line, replace VolumeName and diskX. Note you don't need the sY part, e.g. for disk5s2 you will be using /dev/disk5 only.
    • diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ VolumeName /dev/diskX - cross your fingers and hit return.
  • by Luke Eischen,

    Luke Eischen Luke Eischen Apr 17, 2014 6:35 PM in response to jake10e
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 17, 2014 6:35 PM in response to jake10e

    I have figured out a solution to this issue.  Go to the terminal and enter the following.

     

     

    diskutil cs delete “Put Your Logical Volume Group UUID Here”

     

     

    Ex. 8DD219E1-AA47-4F4C-A9DF-72BE79143B43

     

     

    You can get your UUID from the About This Mac-More Info-System Report-Storage

     

     

    Make sure to select the proper drive and you want the UUID for the Logical Volume GROUP.

     

    It worked for me:

     

    Disk Description : ST3000DM001-1CH166 Media  Total Capacity : 3 TB (3,000,592,982,016 Bytes)

      Connection Bus : SATA  Write Status : Read/Write

      Connection Type : Internal  S.M.A.R.T. Status : Verified

      Connection ID : "Bay 3"  Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table 

  • by justinfromfort collins,

    justinfromfort collins justinfromfort collins Jun 12, 2015 6:00 PM in response to jake10e
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 12, 2015 6:00 PM in response to jake10e

    Hi Jake10e,

     

    I'm not sure if you ever found a solution to your problems, but I'm here to help you! and this is the absolute "Simplified Answers" that you and/or anyone in this situation.

     

    First thing first, remove all "extra" external and internal hard drives from you mac if possible. (leave your main Mac OS X of course!)

    Second. Leave only the affected HHD in question that has "Logical Volume Group". Therefore, this will eliminate all the confusion and mistake that you might see.

    1, Go to Finder and right click on the affected hhd and select "Get Info"

    2, Once the info window opens up, go down to the bottom right corner and click the padlock key to enter your password to unlock it, and keep it unlock at all time.

    3, Now, Open the terminal and type exactly as follows:  (WITHOUT THE ">>>>>") I use 5 greater arrow signs to indicate terminal input only!

    >>>>>  diskutil cs list (Return Key) (There are 2 groups of Numbers you need to pay attention to and those are "Logical Volume" and "Logical Volume Group")

    you should see something like this "Logical Volume 123FE123-1234-123E-B5EF-ED9EB123B0CE"

    Now, type in exactly as follows and of course remember to replace your own "Logical Volume 123FE123-1234-123E-B5EF-ED9EB123B0CE":

    >>>>> diskutil coreStorage deleteVolume 123FE123-1234-123E-B5EF-ED9EB123B0CE   (Return Key)  (remember to type in only your "123FE123-1234-123E-B5EF-ED9EB123B0CE" DO NOT TYPE IN THE WORD "Logical Volume". This will delete and unmount the "Logical Volume" only.

    Now, you will continue with deleting the "Logical Volume Group" as follows:

    >>>>> diskutil coreStorage delete A12345B5-C123-456C-789F-9E123A2A1234     (Return Key)  (remember to type in only your "A12345B5-C123-456C-789F-9E123A2A1234"  DO NOT TYPE IN THE WORD "Logical Volume Group" This will remove all info's and return your hhd back to its virgin state.

     

    Now, open up the disk utilities app and you will see its virgin state and all its options to like "First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID, Restore" back again.

    Note: The Most Important Thing To Remember is "Make Sure That The Permission Padlock in UNLOCK At All Time"

    Lock it back when you're all done.

     

    Good Luck!

  • by dctyke,

    dctyke dctyke Aug 5, 2015 4:19 PM in response to justinfromfort collins
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 5, 2015 4:19 PM in response to justinfromfort collins

    justinfromfort collins, your last post was very helpful, thank you !

  • by Jondor,

    Jondor Jondor Oct 1, 2015 7:17 AM in response to justinfromfort collins
    Level 1 (26 points)
    Oct 1, 2015 7:17 AM in response to justinfromfort collins

    Thank you justinfromfort collins. Your solution help to fix the Logical Volume Bug for my WD 3TB Green HDD. Thanks again!

  • by benojamin,

    benojamin benojamin Oct 7, 2015 4:56 AM in response to justinfromfort collins
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 7, 2015 4:56 AM in response to justinfromfort collins

    Hi This is my 1st post so be prepared.  I went round this a different way by erasing in firewire disk Target mode between two macs and adding guid table and then raiding.

    cheers ben

  • by Rondinelli,

    Rondinelli Rondinelli Jan 25, 2016 6:34 PM in response to SnipperJS
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 25, 2016 6:34 PM in response to SnipperJS

    The commands are:

    diskutil cs list

    diskutil cs deleteVolume <Logical Volume UDID>

    diskutil cs delete <logical volume group UDID>

    Thanks for the command lines SnipperJS. My DVD drive is dead and will not boot from the install disk.

    This fixed it

  • by Steve Hoge,

    Steve Hoge Steve Hoge Mar 1, 2016 11:06 PM in response to Rondinelli
    Level 2 (170 points)
    Mar 1, 2016 11:06 PM in response to Rondinelli


    The commands are:

    diskutil cs list

    diskutil cs deleteVolume <Logical Volume UDID>

    diskutil cs delete <logical volume group UDID>

     

    I'm on 10.9.5 and this set of commands brought my new 3TB drive back from Core Storage/Logical Volume Group **** - and then I successfully repartitioned it into 4 volumes using the same procedure that had previously gotten me into trouble using Disk Utility.   Seems to be working fine and I'm currently cloning another drive to it.  

     

    So is the bug hit-and-miss intermittent?   Am I in for trouble down the road?   Did it get fixed in Yosemite or El Cap?

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Mar 2, 2016 8:40 AM in response to Steve Hoge
    Level 9 (61,140 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 2, 2016 8:40 AM in response to Steve Hoge

    Only the Mac Pro silver towers, last issued in 2012 can have this problem (unless you dismantle your iMac to install a huge drive inside).

     

    Core Storage Logical Volume group is EXACTLY what you would like if the next command is to encrypt the whole drive or create a Fusion Drive. So MacBook Pro owners are not unhappy.

     

    This has been an issue since 10.8.4 and has not been changed, despite the major reworking of the GUI for 10.11 ElCapitan.

     

    So Don't hold your breath on this being fixed.

  • by Marc Heusser,

    Marc Heusser Marc Heusser Sep 27, 2016 3:29 PM in response to Alley_Cat
    Level 2 (264 points)
    Sep 27, 2016 3:29 PM in response to Alley_Cat

    YES - had this Logical Volume Group format as well on a MacPro Early 2008 inserting a new Toshiba 3 GB drive and hitting the wrong tab.

    There is a brute force way in Terminal to zap the GPT:

    (you need to do that in an administrative account, so you can sudo, having all the powers for one command - be carful and check typing twice, so there are no extraneous spaces and such)

     

    sudo gpt destroy disk3

     

    replace disk3 with whatever disk you need to zap the GPT.

    The disk number can be found in Disk Utility if you select the respective disk.

    After that you have an unformatted disk.

     

    (gpt can also create GPT tables, and partitions, see man gpt in Terminal)

     

    Hope that helps

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Sep 27, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Marc Heusser
    Level 9 (61,140 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 27, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Marc Heusser

    NB>

    Disk numbers are assigned dynamically at Startup. Check carefully in the SAME SESSION to make certain what your disk numbers are before proceeding.

     

    Terminal is completely unforgiving.

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