emadams1980
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Q: Access to the extra hard drives on my Mac Pro

I just received a Mid 2009 Mac Pro.  I am setting it up and look through the Disk Utility.  I notice there are 5 - 1TB drives along with a 500 BG OS drive.  Disk Utility.png

I can't seem to figure out how I get access to these drives.  I want to set them up for different things and set up a file structure for various files.  All I see when I look at the HD Capacity is this.

Info.png

How do I get access to these drives?

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jul 24, 2015 3:58 PM

by Drew Reece,Solvedanswer
Drew Reece Drew Reece
Level 5 (7,793 points)
Notebooks
A:

Your last image says …

"To delete a selected RAID set, click delete."

 

You need to select the 5TB - 'Master Raid' - striped RAID Set and click delete if you want to destroy the set.

If you cannot delete it select the 'Master Raid' in the left sidebar & try deleting there.

 

After doing that you should repartition each of the disks & create a new filesystem (you probably want 'Macintosh OS Extended journaled')

 

I don't know of any guides, this is not a normal situation for most users.

Apple have this brief info…

Disk Utility 12.x: Delete a RAID set

Posted on Jul 25, 2015 12:50 PM

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emadams1980

Q: Access to the extra hard drives on my Mac Pro

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  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jul 24, 2015 4:10 PM in response to emadams1980
    Level 5 (7,793 points)
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    Jul 24, 2015 4:10 PM in response to emadams1980

    Those drives are combined into the 'Master Raid'. RAID is a way to use multiple disks to help with performance or to help when a disk fails.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

     

    Did you setup this Mac?

     

    To use the disks as independent disks you will need to remove them from the RAID setup. You should backup all data that is on the 'Master Raid' volume before you do that - editing the RAID will cause issues & can easily cause data loss. Backup the OS disk too incase anything goes wrong.

     

    Try selecting the 'Master Raid' volume & inspect that - it should show you the info in the RAID tab in Disk Utility.

  • by emadams1980,

    emadams1980 emadams1980 Jul 24, 2015 4:20 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 24, 2015 4:20 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Thank you for your reply.  I don't have to remove them if I don't need to.  How do I get access to the drive in the finder so that I can use the drive and make sure the documents I am working with go onto that drive and not the OS drive?

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jul 24, 2015 4:53 PM in response to emadams1980
    Level 5 (7,793 points)
    Notebooks
    Jul 24, 2015 4:53 PM in response to emadams1980

    Examine Master Raid in Disk Utlity. If it has errors it may not mount.

     

    In Finder open 'Go menu > Computer' & look for the disk. If it is mounted it will appear there.

  • by emadams1980,

    emadams1980 emadams1980 Jul 25, 2015 12:03 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2015 12:03 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Okay.  I looked in the Finder like you had said and nothing was there.  This is what I found.

    Finder.png

    I looked through the Disk Utilities and I think I got some more information.  Take a look at this:

     

    I verified each of the drives and this is what they said

    Disk Verify.png

    However, I got to the last one and it said something different.

    Last Drive Error.png

    I tried to repair the disk like it asked and it just kept saying the same thing.

     

    Then I looked at each of the slices for Master and this is what information showed for all 5 drives.

    Each Volume.png

    So, where do I go from here?  I would like to repair the last drive and redo all 5 drives to get access to them.  I already made a Time Machine backup of the computer on an external drive I had lying around.  What is the next step?  Is there a tutorial or step by step walk through I can follow somewhere?

  • by Drew Reece,Solvedanswer

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jul 25, 2015 12:50 PM in response to emadams1980
    Level 5 (7,793 points)
    Notebooks
    Jul 25, 2015 12:50 PM in response to emadams1980

    Your last image says …

    "To delete a selected RAID set, click delete."

     

    You need to select the 5TB - 'Master Raid' - striped RAID Set and click delete if you want to destroy the set.

    If you cannot delete it select the 'Master Raid' in the left sidebar & try deleting there.

     

    After doing that you should repartition each of the disks & create a new filesystem (you probably want 'Macintosh OS Extended journaled')

     

    I don't know of any guides, this is not a normal situation for most users.

    Apple have this brief info…

    Disk Utility 12.x: Delete a RAID set

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Jul 25, 2015 1:00 PM in response to emadams1980
    Level 10 (190,740 points)
    Apple Watch
    Jul 25, 2015 1:00 PM in response to emadams1980

    This may help since yu appear to be using an Apple RAID card

    Mac Pro (Mid 2012 and earlier): Frequently Asked Questions about the Mac Pro RAID Card and Xserve RAID Card - Apple Supp…

    https://www.apple.com/xserve/pdf/RAID_Utility_User_Guide.pdf

  • by emadams1980,

    emadams1980 emadams1980 Jul 25, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Alright.  I have success!  Thank you so much Drew.  I now have access to the entire 5.5 TB of hard drive space on the computer.  I was able to delete the 5TB - 'Master Raid' - striped RAID Set.  I just partitioned each drive to its full 1TB.  Here is what the disk utility looks like now.

    New Drives.png

    I checked and I do have access to all of the drives in the Finder now as well.

    Finder View.png

    Now the questions is, what do I do with all of this space.  I have a 3TB Western Digital NAS drive, 2TB Firewire Drives (1 is 1TB and 2 are 500GB), plus the 5.5 TB on the computer.  Hmmm, choices, choices.

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jul 25, 2015 2:52 PM in response to emadams1980
    Level 5 (7,793 points)
    Notebooks
    Jul 25, 2015 2:52 PM in response to emadams1980

    emadams1980 wrote:

     

    Alright.  I have success!  Thank you so much Drew. 

    Great, I'm glad we got there

     

    emadams1980 wrote:

     

    Now the questions is, what do I do with all of this space.  I have a 3TB Western Digital NAS drive, 2TB Firewire Drives (1 is 1TB and 2 are 500GB), plus the 5.5 TB on the computer.  Hmmm, choices, choices.

    You can host my backups if you like

  • by emadams1980,

    emadams1980 emadams1980 Jul 25, 2015 2:58 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2015 2:58 PM in response to Drew Reece

    LOL   Something tells me I am not going to have to worry about space for some time.