6TB drives won't mount after restart in Mac Pro 2012

I've made a thread for people to add working model numbers of large TB drives in mac

Might be good if they could mention the exact model numbers of working or non working drives, if they boot from SATA, SSD or SSD+PCI and also possibly my theory firmware updated cMP's

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8009098

I have an HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 HUS726040ALE614 4 TB 3.5" Internal Hard Drive and I have the very same issue on my mid-2010 MacPro. My solution: instead of restarting, I shut down the Mac and then start from there. Then the drive always mounts. Puzzling.

Mac Pro 5,1 - 12 core - 2.93 Ghz

Western Digital Black 6TB drive model # WD6002FZWX

Os X v10.10.5

Same issue here...

Cold boot - drive mounts, Restart - does not mount and does not show in Disk Utility or System Profiler.

Seems to work just fine in 10.7.5 on same rig. - Not an option for us.

Also hot plugging the drive in 10.10.5 does not force a mount.

Tested with 10.12.4 - same problem.

I expect the reason is that this drive takes a long time to first spin down, then spin back up again. When you do a restart, it is not yet ready when the system expects it to be there, so it is ignored.

Drives with more platters are going to be spinning a set of platters that is a bit more massive than a drive with fewer platters. But the amount of energy needed, once, to get it spinning from a dead stop probably does not justify using a much larger spindle motor.

Any technique that allows it to fully spin down before asking it to spin up again should work.

Maybe. Others have said that restart doesn't spin down the drive. Workarounds based on this hypothesis haven't worked. I'd like a better workaround than manually setting my computer to start up the minute after I shut it down.

This should solve your problem. Just change Machintosh HD in line 3 to the name of your HD.

I intentionally set it to wait 3 min before running the check so the drive has the opportunity to mount and so that you can remove the plist if there is an issue.

Save the following as 6TB_Drive_Mount_Check.sh in Documents/Scripts

make it executable by launching terminal and typing:

chmod a+x

then drag 6TB_Drive_Mount_Check.sh onto the terminal and press return. (I recommend downloading bbedit or TextWrangler for this)

#!/bin/bash
say started
sleep 180 # wait for 3 min before continuing. This give the driver time to mount and hopefully prevent an inadvertent reboot loop
DriveCheck=$(diskutil list|grep "Macintosh HD") ; echo $DriveCheck

TimeIn5Min=$(echo `date -v+5M +%m/%d/%Y" "%H:%M:%S`)

if [ -z "$DriveCheck" ]; #If Null
    then
        say "no drive found"
        pmset schedule wakeorpoweron "$TimeIn5Min" # Schedule Power On in 5 Min
        say "system power on set for" "$TimeIn5Min"
        say "system will power down in 2 min"
        shutdown -h + 2 # System will shut down in 2 min.
    else
        say $DriveCheck Found
fi

exit 0

Change USERNAME below to your username then save this as CheckDriveMount.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons

Then it should run at every boot.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
    <dict>
        <key>PATH</key>
        <string>/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/sbin</string>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>CheckDriveMount</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/sh</string>
        <string>/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Scripts/6TB_Drive_Mount_Check.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

I placed a say command the script so you know if it's working properly. You can comment them out if it works. If you get stuck in a reboot loop remove the plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons. You have about 5 min after boot before another reboot commences.

Admittedly the machine I have that had this issue has given up the ghost so I have no use for this now. Let me know if you have issues and I will try to sort them.

You are using advanced drives. You will need to take additional actions to work-around and continue to use them.

I suggest you simply refrain from choosing Restart, and instead choose Shutdown, wait for all noises to stop, then press the power button to start up again. If that does not work, count to 10 after it gets quiet.

I did testing with a MacPro5,1 and a WD 6TB disk. 10.7.x worked properly - drive mounted after a restart. 10.8.x - 10.12.4 drive does not mount after a restart.

In my view Apple can and should fix this. Avoiding restarts is not a solution. Even though it's 7 years old, it is listed as a supported Mac and therefore this should be fixed.

Your recourse, should you choose to pursue this issue, is to make an appointment at the genius bar of an Apple-owned store, present the equipment involved, and press your case in person.

This is a User-to-user forum, and Readers here have no ability to escalate problems to Apple Engineering. Apple makes no promise to read what Users post here, and Never responds here unless an initial post goes unanswered for days.

Unfortunately that's not happening. I got lucky, I got my hands on an older server that mounted the disks fine. My issue was that if the server was rebooted the drives wouldn't mount and I would not know till I connected and needed something from the server. Usually when I need something I need it now. Not an hour after screwing around with the server. So if you find yourself in a similar position the script I wrote, when run at boot, will check if the drive you're looking for is mounted. If not it will set a one off schedule for your computer to boot in 5 min. It will then shut the computer down.

For all intents and purposes this should solve the problem of the drive not being available when you need it. Also if you don't want to mess with a LaunchDaemon plist just rename the file to end with the extension .command and set it up as a start up item. Heck you can even unmount your drive and double click the .command to test it out. The computer should shut down 5 min after you click and start back up five min after that.

If you don't have an issue where your computer reboots periodically for updates then you don't need this. You can simply shut down and power on manually.

Not ideal, but it works.

Same problem here.

Mac Pro 2009 flashed to 2010 running El Capitan (10.11.) booted off of a Samsung 500GB SSD placed on a Sonnet Tempo PCIe 2.0 card in one of the PCIe slots. Removed two (2) working HGST Deskstar 2TB drives mounted internally and replaced with two (2) HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB drives. Drives will only mount when computer starts from a completely "off" state. Drives won't mount and cannot even be seen by Disk Utility or other disk utilities when re-starting the computer.

HGST support boiled down to "you are using NAS drives in a desktop computer, therefore you cannot be surprised if they don't work properly".

Unless someone can come up with some trick to make these drives mount on re-start, I guess I'll be having to remember to shutdown instead.

We experienced the same behavior with 6TB WD drives that are not considered NAS drives running on anything later than OSx v10.7.5. Based on the fact that it works properly in 10.7.5 makes me think it is an Apple problem. With so many people running into this, it would be nice if Apple looked into it and reported back.

Suddenly having the same issue: 2010 Mac Pro 5,1, 64GB, CPUs 2x quad-core 3.46GHz (best bang for the buck), SSD for boot, all drive bays in use, plus 2 mSATA 500GB Samsung SSDs on a PCI card, macOS 10.12.5. Recently replaced two failed/failing internal drives with a 4TB WD NAS (WDBMMA0040HNC-NRSN) and a 4TB HGST Deskstar 7200RPM 128MB cache NAS. The WD is fine, the HGST drive exhibits the same problem everyone else is seeing.

This is a bit of a pain, but I'll have to remember not to restart (or allow restarts after updates). It occurs to me that this could possibly cause problems if I wanted to install macOS on that drive. I haven't yet tested to see if the problem happens under Windows, but from the previous posts, I suspect it will be fine if the issue is Apple drivers and not a hardware problem.

Good to know it's not just me, anyway, and I'm kind of relived to find out it's not the drive.

I do not believe this is a problem with Apple Drivers or any other drivers. The problem occurs when the drives are powered off, so no Drivers are involved.

I believe these are Server Drives, intended for 24/7 usage, and that they do not spin DOWN fast enough to be ready to spin UP again in a few seconds.

Interesting assessment. IIRC the issue did not exist prior to 10.8. If that's the case then maybe 10.7 and prior had a longer lag time prior to boot after shutdown on a reboot. If this is a property that exists in the EFI than maybe a longer lag can be set?

Maybe install REFIT and test? (My 2009 gave up the ghost so I have no way to test.) Again IIRC rEFIt and rEFInd add a small delay to the startup process. The delay may just be enough to allow total spin-down and spin-up for a proper mount.

edit: after looking at rEFIt and rEFInd both have a configurable delay. I'd recommend playing with this. Please report back if you find a winning combo.