Craig Kaplan

Q: 6TB Western Digital (WD Black) Performance HD

I upgraded recently to one of the newer 4TB WD Black hard drives and it has been working great.

 

So, I purchased one of the new 6TB WD Black (WD6001FZWX) drives.

 

When I install it in one of the drive bays in my MacPro Tower (2012 model), Disk Utility sees it but will not initialize it.  Disk Utility tells me that the "Operation Failed". 

 

Western Digital tells me that this drive should work in my machine.

 

Has anyone had this experience?

 

Even though my profile says I am running 10.11.1, I just applied the update to 10.11.2.  So, everything is up to date.

 

Suggestions?

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), 8GB RAM, 256GB SS boot drive

Posted on Dec 16, 2015 6:24 PM

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Q: 6TB Western Digital (WD Black) Performance HD

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  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Dec 17, 2015 1:21 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 10 (188,771 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 1:21 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    Are you using an original sled?

    The depth of the mount holes in the disk are shorter since there is more stuff inside the drive. Using normal length screws can cause incomplete engagement of the contacts on the drive with the contacts in the logic board.

     

    have you tried a different bay?

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 17, 2015 8:45 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 8:45 AM in response to lllaass

    If you ERASE the drive in an Internal bay, Disk Utility after 10.8.3 creates a Core Storage Logical Volume Group on the Drive, and it cannot be partitioned further or erased again.

     

    You can check by typing at the Terminal Prompt $:

     

    diskutil cs list

     

    This will list the Core Storage partitions, if any. You will need the listed UUIDs later to remove them.

     

    Solutions include using an older (pre 10.8.4) System or Installer/Utilities thumb drive to ERASE again, or ERASEing in an External enclosure.

     

    If you are really stuck, you can use Terminal Commands to delete the extraneous Logical Volume group partitioning and move forward. If you need this, post back for additional help -- it will take some research to find the references.

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 17, 2015 9:14 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 9:14 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Could this still be possible in the case of a new drive?  The drive I purchased was a brand new drive mechanism sealed in a static-free bag.

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Dec 17, 2015 9:35 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 10 (188,771 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 9:35 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    What was the format of the new drive? Typically they are of the PC NTFS format

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 17, 2015 9:40 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 9:40 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    If there are no Logical Volume groups, the output will be:

     

    $ diskutil cs list

    No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

    $

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 17, 2015 10:00 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 10:00 AM in response to lllaass

    It was an uninitialized new drive.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 17, 2015 10:30 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 10:30 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    what does Disk Utility say for Partition Map Scheme or Format?

    are there any Volumes shown?

     

    Mac OS X does not want to delete non-empty Volumes off a drive owned by a different Operating System.

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 17, 2015 10:35 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 10:35 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    No volumes shown

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 17, 2015 10:36 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 10:36 AM in response to lllaass

    Tried another bay, same result.

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 17, 2015 11:08 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 11:08 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    It looks like this is the solution to my problem:

     

    Here is the link for the sled:  http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/

     

    Apparently, the standard drive alignment has changed with the advent of these new larger drives.  The replacement sled allows these new drives to interface properly in my machine.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 17, 2015 11:45 AM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 17, 2015 11:45 AM in response to Craig Kaplan

    That replacement sled is only the solution if BOTH of the following are true:

     

    1) the sled you have does not allow four screws to be used, and tightened so that the washers are snug, but not mashed.

     

    2) with the sled you are using, the drive is so badly misaligned that the connectors do not mate, and the drive is not seen AT ALL.

  • by Craig Kaplan,

    Craig Kaplan Craig Kaplan Dec 22, 2015 5:30 PM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Dec 22, 2015 5:30 PM in response to Craig Kaplan

    It looks like Grant was on target with his comments.  The replacement sled did not resolve the problem.

     

    Now, I am wondering if there is a limitation on my machine (Mac Pro [mid 2012]).

     

    Here are the specs directly from MacTracker:

     

    MacPro5,1

    Model Number A1289

    EMC 2314

    Order Number MD770LL/A (Quad-Core)

     

    Does anyone know if this machine supports the Western Digital Black 6TB drive mechanisms?  I have one of the 4TB mechanisms in the machine now and it is working fine.

     

    Can someone tell me if this drive will work in my machine?  If I can confirm this, then I will ask them to replace the drive as there must be something wrong with it.

     

    Thank you.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 22, 2015 5:53 PM in response to Craig Kaplan
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 22, 2015 5:53 PM in response to Craig Kaplan

    Your Drive is fully compatible with your Mac. The Mac Pro silver tower running any version after 10.4 Panther supports drives over 8 million Terabytes, including drives with 4K block size.

     

    But if you ERASE the drive in an Internal bay with 10.8.4 or later, a bug in Disk Utility means the drive cannot be partitioned or erased further (because it creates a Core Storage Logical Volume Group).

     

    Solutions include:

     

    • erasing again in an External enclosure (which can re-erase and does not incur the Bug)

    • using a system or Installer thumb drive from 10.7 or early 10.8 (10.6 DVD will not boot the Mac Pro 5,1)

    • deleting the Core Storage partions using Terminal

    • erasing the drive again in Terminal  [not recommended because there are no safeguards to keep you from erasing the wrong drive]

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 22, 2015 6:21 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 22, 2015 6:21 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Can you post a screenshot of the Disk Utility window with the drive selected by Hardware-name and what it is showing for the status, bay number, drive type, formatting, etc that used to be shown along the bottom of that pane?

     

    How to take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support


    How to Post a screenshot to the Apple Discussion Forums

     

    .

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