Adam Wunn
Level 1 (4 points)
Servers Enterprise

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

The problem manifests itself when a 6TB HGST drive does NOT mount on the desktop nor appears in the Disk Utility after a reboot. The ONLY way I have figured out how to work around this problem is to shut down the computer and the open the case and slightly pull out one 6TB hard drive (i.e. enough to release it from the SATA connector on the logic board) and then push it back in. At that point, if I boot the computer any and all 6TB HGST drives installed in the computer will appear on the desktop until I restart the next time. I don't have to remove each and every drive to make them all appear, just one.

 

When I first experienced this issue, I assumed it was a hardware problem with that one computer, but I have now experienced it again with a different computer at the different company and with a 6TB HGST drive from a different production batch. Now that I have two data points, I want to test this configuration on other computers to see if I can figure out if it is more widespread than the existing two machines.

 

The similarities between the two machines are more than the differences. They are both Mac Pro 2010 5,1 models at their core, but they are also both the 2012 variant that was a slight upgrade from the 2010 model. They both have the shipping EFI firmware (which is the latest for that model). They both have 20GB of RAM and they both run Mac OS X 10.8.5. One machine is used for graphic design and the other is a server. They also both have more than one drive slot being used. The one machine that is the server have four drives. Two are 2GB drives used as the boot partitions. The last two are 6TB data drives. The other machine that is used for design has two 2TB drives for booting and backup and one 6TB drive for Time Machine (the fourth slot is empty). In both cases the 2TB drives are Toshiba drives (using the HGST derived manufacture process). Also in both cases the two 2TB drives are in slot 1 and 2 and the 6TB drive(s) are in 3 or 3 and 4. They both have ATI Radeon 5770 cards.  Both are plugged into Ethernet networks and do not have wireless turned on.

 

There are some differences too. The server has a number of external RAID boxes connected via an ESATA card. The other computer has nothing in the PCI-E slots. The server has an after market replacement DVD and the graphics machine has its stock DVD drive. The server machine runs OS X Server.app.

 

I have a number of resources at my disposal so I plan to do some further testing. That said, I don't have everything to be really thorough and would love some help from others whom are either experiencing this or just want to help.  Here is what I don't know and would like to test.

 

I have in my world Mac Pros that I can test at different customer locations. I can test a 1,1 easily, and I can also test a 3,1 and 4,1. I have those all available in my direct control right now. What I don't have is a 5,1 2010 model, but I can borrow one to test. I can also procure another 6TB HGST drive. What I don't have is a WD 6TB or other brand. I would love to know if this is specific to HGST or if it is a general problem for 6TB drives, Also, for that matter, I would love to see if this happens with 5TB drives. Has anyone else installed a HGST or WD 6TB and had mounting problems?

 

It would also be great to know if this issue is independent of OS. I plan to test 10.6, 10.8, and 10.10. Of course on the 1,1 Mac Pro I can't test past 10.7. I also would like to know if it matters that a 2TB drive is present and even if that drive is a Toshiba or other brand and even the quantity of drives and their slot position.  I  hazily remember trying to move drives around in slots when I first encountered this problem. I also wonder if different models of the 6TB drive may behave differently (i.e. NAS versus Enterprise).

 

I plan to post my results when I am done with the testing.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Jul 16, 2015 11:26 AM

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Adam Wunn

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

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  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Jul 21, 2015 5:23 PM in response to Adam Wunn
    Level 9 (60,774 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 21, 2015 5:23 PM in response to Adam Wunn

    So Adam Wunn-

     

    Do you think Hitachi is correct? The drives just spin up too slowly to be seen after a Restart? 

     

    If they are right, would these drives be OK for some customers as Backup Drives for a manual Backup procedure? For Time machine?

  • by Adam Wunn,

    Adam Wunn Adam Wunn Jul 21, 2015 5:38 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Jul 21, 2015 5:38 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Grant,

     

    It is possible they are correct, but I am skeptical. If you restart the computer, the drives don't spin down, therefore they should unit attention ready. A shut down and restart is the only circumstance where their suggestion makes sense to me. The fact that the "He" drives work and the NAS don't, tells me that there is a design difference or firmware issue. I have a feeling that I will get back from Hitachi some form of "NAS drives are meant for stand alone NAS units and weren't designed to be used in a server." or some-such silliness, but I may be wrong on that. Time will tell.

     

    I too was thinking about what to do with the existing two drives I can't return for credit. Using the drive as an external or in a dock will probably work just fine since they are not plugged into the internal SATA. It might also work with an ESATA card internally. I haven't tested either configuration, but I plan to try. They may also work with a dock like the OWC Voyager. I think that at this point any application where the drive will be mounted internally is going to be an issue.

     

    I will post more once I test more or if HGST calls me back with more information.

  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot Jul 21, 2015 5:46 PM in response to Adam Wunn
    Level 4 (1,342 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 21, 2015 5:46 PM in response to Adam Wunn

    FWIW I have one of those HGST 6TB drives in an external OWC enclosure, and it's been fine. I can boot from it and it mounts on restarts. It's connected via FW800; haven't tried it with eSATA or USB3 yet. My impression is that it may be a tad slower to mount than external other drives I have hooked up to the Mac Pro, but I wouldn't swear to that.

  • by sinoue,

    sinoue sinoue Jul 27, 2015 11:09 AM in response to Adam Wunn
    Level 2 (220 points)
    Wireless
    Jul 27, 2015 11:09 AM in response to Adam Wunn

    I just got off the phone with Matt at HGST Support and he said this is a known problem with the Mac Pro Tower line and was originally reported to them by OWC and that these drives are unsupported on the older Mac Pros (Towers not Trash Can).

     

    I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro Tower with all 4 internal hard drive bays filled with two 4TB HGST 72000 RPM drives and two 6TB HGST 72000 Deskstar NAS drives. I boot from an internal 1TB Samsung SSD mounted on an OWC Accelsior S board connected to my Mac's PCIe slot.

     

    I can confirm under Yosemite that the 6TB drives mount fine on a cold boot, but if I do a restart only the SSD and 4TB HDDs mount, leaving the two 6TB drives unmounted and unseeable by Disk Utility.

     

    I can live with doing cold boot ups vs restarts, but I'd be curious to know if this is a hardware issue with using a fast SSD drive, or an incompatibility with the older Mac Pro Towers SATAII 3G connectors (instead of the standard SATAIII 6G connections on newer machines).

  • by Nadir of Moscow,

    Nadir of Moscow Nadir of Moscow Jul 30, 2015 1:15 AM in response to sinoue
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2015 1:15 AM in response to sinoue

    Just to verify issue, I sold this 6TB HGST 72000 Deskstar NAS drive to friend of mine who uses MacPro 3.1 8-core 2.8GHz.

    The drive mounts fine - no complains (installed in standard slot).

    So looks like the "HGST NAS No hot restart mount issue" is specific to MacPro 5.1 model.

    Counting limited number of installed system, i would not expect HGST to address the problem with firmware.

  • by sinoue,

    sinoue sinoue Aug 7, 2015 5:01 PM in response to Nadir of Moscow
    Level 2 (220 points)
    Wireless
    Aug 7, 2015 5:01 PM in response to Nadir of Moscow

    Nadir - Thanks for letting me know the drives worked fine in your friend's computer.

     

    Update: The problem seems to be specific to users booting off an OWC Accelsior S PCIe card. I have a Samsung 1TB SSD installed in my Accelsior S card and use it as a boot drive for my Mid 2010 Mac Pro Tower that has 4 HGST HDDs in the drive slots. The 2 HGST 4TB drives work fine on restarts, but the 2 6TB HGST drives are only seen if I do a boot up from a shut down. If I do a restart the 2 6TB drives disappear from Finder and Disk Utility.

     

    On "hold" with Other World Computing's online chat to see if there is going to be a solution, or if we need to live with cold starts.

  • by Matthew Wilson5,

    Matthew Wilson5 Matthew Wilson5 Aug 8, 2015 4:33 AM in response to sinoue
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Aug 8, 2015 4:33 AM in response to sinoue

    I'm booting from a crucial SSD in one of the drive bays and have this issue so it can't be that specific PCI-e card.

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Aug 8, 2015 7:32 AM in response to Matthew Wilson5
    Level 10 (188,143 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 8, 2015 7:32 AM in response to Matthew Wilson5

    Do you have TRIM enabled?

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Aug 8, 2015 8:10 AM in response to Matthew Wilson5
    Level 9 (60,774 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 8, 2015 8:10 AM in response to Matthew Wilson5

    Booting from an SSD will cause the system to go looking for the rotating drives much sooner than if it were booting from another rotating drive.

     

    These drives could be coming up to speed and showing "ready" inordinately slowly, and miss the window when you do a Restart instead of a Cold start.

  • by Matthew Wilson5,

    Matthew Wilson5 Matthew Wilson5 Aug 8, 2015 8:36 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Aug 8, 2015 8:36 AM in response to lllaass

    Personally I now have TRIM enabled again since 10.10.4 - had been running without before since 10.10.0 so doesn't have an effect for me.

  • by Adam Wunn,

    Adam Wunn Adam Wunn Aug 12, 2015 1:23 PM in response to sinoue
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 12, 2015 1:23 PM in response to sinoue

    After several conversations with OWC, they finally admitted to me that they agree this is an issue and that I shouldn't expect that Apple or HGST will do anything since the problem occurs on legacy products. I have also been told that the sales staff is making sure to steer people clear of the HGST NAS 6TB drive and suggesting other capacities or brands.

  • by Adam Wunn,

    Adam Wunn Adam Wunn Aug 12, 2015 1:24 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 12, 2015 1:24 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    In my case ALL of the affected machines use 7,200 RPM hard drives to boot from and do not have any SSD drives installed. I have tried different combinations of capacity of drives and brands and all that really seems to matter is if the HGST 6TB NAS drive is installed. In that case, the problem always occurs and no other configuration change seems to make a difference.

  • by Adam Wunn,

    Adam Wunn Adam Wunn Aug 12, 2015 2:06 PM in response to sinoue
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 12, 2015 2:06 PM in response to sinoue

    Here is my latest report on my tests and results.

     

    I tested the HGST 6TB NAS drive in a Mac Pro 3,1; a 4,1; and a 2010 5,1; and a 2012 5,1. 

     

    In Mac OS X 10.6.x the drive mounted properly from a cold boot and when restarting. I could also use the drive as a data only drive or a boot drive without issue. I was able to reproduce this result with the 3,1; 4,1; 2010 5,1; and 2012 5,1.  I chose not to try this in a 1,1 Mac Pro since, I knew that drive worked properly with 10.6, the test seemed superfluous.

     

    In Mac OS X 10.8.x, the drive mounted properly from a cold boot and when restarting only with a Mac Pro 2008 3,1. The drive would not mount after a restart, without first shutting down the computer, on the Mac Pro 4,1; 2010 5,1; and 2012 5,1. I also tried using it as boot drive on all of the computers with the same results. The interesting thing is that what I saw may dispel the idea of this being a rotational unit attention ready issue. The grey apple would appear when restarting from the 6TB drive AND the progress bar would start to load, but eventually the grey apple logo would change to the circle with a slash that appears when drives are failing or the OS is corrupted. If I simply forced the power off and then immediately booted the computer again, all worked well and the OS on the 6TB booted successfully.

     

    In Mac OS X 10.10.x the results were the same of the 10.8 test. The Mac Pro 3,1 worked flawlessly, while the 4,1 and both 5,1 models failed with the expected pattern to both tests as a data drive and a boot drive.

     

    I purchased a HGST Helium drive (the more expensive enterprise version and repeated all of the same tests and the drive worked perfectly for both booting and for data on all of the computers tested. So as suggested earlier in this thread the Helium is compatible (though more expensive) and a good alternative to the NAS drive to work around this problem.

     

    To summarize, the Mac Pro 3,1 works without issue with the 6TB NAS and the Helium drives in all of the tested OS versions.  The 4,1 and both 5,1 models are compatible with the Helium drives but they do not work properly with the NAS drives in 10.8 and 10.10. Conversely, if those same machines are running 10.6 the NAS drives work fine.

     

    So this does indeed seem to be a driver issue on Apple's end or a firmware issue on HGST's end. My gut says it is Apple's problem since the drive works fine with an ancient OS and doesn't work with newer versions. I am pretty sure that I once read something to the effect that with the Mac Pro 4,1 Apple changed a controller for the SATA system and is using a newer class of driver. I can only speculate as to whether that is at least part of the cause of this issue.

     

    For now I am satisfied that I have a answer that is good enough to explain what is happening and how to work around it. I am not holding out any hope that this problem will ever be resolved, but at least I have an answer that will work for my customers. Thank you to everyone who helped with this issue and for your insight and support. At the beginning, I was afraid I was the only one who was experiencing this issue.

  • by Adam Wunn,

    Adam Wunn Adam Wunn Aug 12, 2015 2:07 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 12, 2015 2:07 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    I experienced the same issue with hard drives though so having an SSD in the mix doesn't seem to make any difference.

  • by The hatter,

    The hatter The hatter Aug 12, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Adam Wunn
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Aug 12, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Adam Wunn

    I have read of people using WD NAS (Red) drives, though I would think only suitable for a NAS box and hardware RAID, not internal. Mostly it was to save money as the prices on other 6TB drives can be very much higher.  But the firmware for drives designed for RAID can be customized and not work in other environments. Not really legacy or not issue.

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