Why no RAID options for new disks?

Question

Why no RAID options for new disks?

Hi support group,

"My name is Shaun, and I am a mac-aholic"

I inserted 4 new 3TB disks into the bays of my Mac Pro (2012), and there is no RAID option for them.

How I got here:

Inserted the WD Red drives, and they were not initiated.

I "erased" the drives, gave them names, and they appear in Disk Utility in grey drives.

Went to set up the RAID, and move the drives into the RAID, but got an error that they could not be used.

It appears to me that disk utility is not allowing me to fully use those drives. I Have created RAID drives before with no issue in RAID1 with 3TB drives before on this machine. Am perplexed, I thought this to be the easy and simple part of my upgrade odyssey! Did I screw up the initialization? On all FOUR drives?

Now, if I click on the drives, the RAID option does not present itself.

FWIW, I am using OS X 10.9.5, on Mac Pro 5,1. I boot from PCIe card. My end goal is to create a 4-disk RAID 10 using the four SATA connections on the MP.

Posted on Nov 30, 2014 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 30, 2014 9:41 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

Did you use Disk Utility to properly format these new drive for Mac use?

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Answer 2

Nov 30, 2014 9:44 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Yes, when they were inserted, it told me they were not initialized. I "erased" them as MAC OS Extended Journaled.

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Answer 3

Nov 30, 2014 9:48 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

Here is what disk utility shows Not really sure what the highlighted entry is, maybe a clue?

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Answer 4

Nov 30, 2014 9:49 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

Here is another one, note, no RAID option

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Answer 5

Nov 30, 2014 9:55 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

There is a known BUG in 10.8.4 and later for drives over 2.2TB ERASEd in the internal bays. It creates a Core Storage Group for them instead of a simple Volume, and they are then useless.

Work-arounds include:

• Erase again in an external enclosure (one modern enough to actually erase a >2.2TG Drive)

• Erase with an older version of Mac OS X, such as 10.6 off the "Full Retail" DVD if you Mac can boot from it [Mac Pro 5,1 requires custom 10.6.4 minimum] or your original "shipped in the box" DVD, if available.

NB> one user who simply used "Partition" instead of ERASE escaped this issue entirely.

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Answer 6

Nov 30, 2014 1:57 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks Grant!

Apple should really work to resolve this....

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Answer 7

Dec 1, 2014 9:28 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

shaunfromgilbert --

What did you end up doing to work around this problem?

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Answer 8

Dec 1, 2014 10:20 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

It was really pretty simple based on your feedback, I powered down, removed the drives from the SATA backplane, moved each drive separately to the USB enclosure, then re-"erased" in OSX-Etended. I ejected each drive when finished, and moved to the next one until all four were re-"erased". Then I restarted the Mac with all four in the SATA connections, and all four were visible and had the RAID option tab. I created the three RAID schemes (two stripe and one mirror), and dragged the drives into the RAID option. Then I hit "create" or some other command to finish the RAID.

Note that I did get an error on the RAID creation. From memory, this was "cannot create RAID without an unmounted disk" or something like that. I cleared the error, and then opened back up Disk Utility. All the RAIDs were listed, and were operational with the green "On" signal. I could read/write/transfer from the RAID. Once I transfer the data to this RAID, I will work on a way to test it, but if any risk to the data, I might just leave well enough alone.

For now, it seems I have a fully functional RAID 1+0 using the four HDD on the SATA connections in my Mac Pro 5,1.

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Answer 9

Dec 1, 2014 10:55 AM in response to shaunfromgilbert

Thanks for sharing that.

Now users who search for similar problems will find your success story.

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