OSx / El Capitan - HDD Problem.

[Cableaddict]

I just bought three NOS 4 TB HGST drives. They are the expensive “Deskstar 7400” enterprise series. I have an unusual problem with two of them..

As I explain, I’ll refer to just one drive:
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First time installing the drive (in an external bay) I was not able to initialize the main drive itself, (the “physical disk” ) I used the standard mac formats: “Guild Partition Map” and “OSx Extended (journaled) - but I got an error.

But I WAS able to erase/ initialize the (single) volume, to the full 4 TB.

Was there a mistake here?
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OK, so after that, the drive checked fine, and I was able to write huge amounts of data to it, both by dragging, and by using Carbon Copy Cloner.

This drive seems fine for maybe 24 hrs, and passesd every test. Then suddenly it starts to have problems, like I can’t drag files to or from it. I get a prompt showing Mac Error 50. (I’ve read up on this, but I can only find a solution for getting files off, not for permanently fixing the drive.)

At that point both the main drive, and the (sole) partition fail the Mac’s “Disk Utility” repair diagnostic, and there is no repair possible.

If I power-cycle the Mac, the main drive once again passes Disk Utility, and the partition suddenly can be repaired! During this repair, I get the following prompt:

“Updating boot support partitions as need ….”

This has happened about FIVE times so far, since I put it into use on Friday.

Although the drive checks out 100% ok in every other way, (using Tech tool Pro, DiskWarrior, SMART readings, etc ) I am really freaking out about this.

So, any ideas?
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Additionally, the second drive has an extra problem, which may be fatal:

Besides the above, and even though it also checks out 100% in every other way, I cannot write to it using Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC tells me that there are write errors.
It does this even if I JUST re-initialed it.

Ughh.

Is it toast?

 

[JaredDM]

I highly doubt the drives are the issue. These drives are rock solid, to get two bad ones would be like getting hit by lightning twice in a row (if they were Seagate, I'd be saying the opposite). I'd suspect your issue is somewhere else such as a messed up motherboard SATA controller chip, bad SATA cable, failing power supply, etc.

Start by completely ruling out the whole computer you're using and try them on another computer. If the drives work fine there, you can bet your problem is elsewhere.

 

[Cableaddict]

Thanks, Jared, but It's not my system. I'm an A/V pro, and have about twenty external drives. I have never seen this problem before.

(I've also totally checked my entire system, just in case.)

I agree with you that this is incredibly unlikely with these drives. I have also read all sorts of related problems with large drives under El Capitan. I can get the drive to unmount, using terminal commands, but then the problem cmes right back.

FWIW, the third of these drives I just bought, also NOS (not refurbished) Had the same problem, but additioally fails SMARt tests immediately after formatting. Too many bad sectors ! A brand new 7400 series.

I'm wondering if HGST had a bad run, and dumped them to various resellers. there sure are a lot of nos ones for sale right now.

 

[JaredDM]

I guess I missed the fact that you're externally connecting them. I assumed that you were connecting them internally via the SATA. I assume that by NOS you really mean NAS. It's possible that the drives are using a native 4K sector format and don't offer the 512byte sector emulation that most desktop drives would have. As most NASes are Linux or FreeBSD based they don't need the emulation.

I'd bet that your dock just doesn't support the sector format and it's going haywire. When you're initializing the drives it's creating a partition table using 512 byte sectors (all the dock supports) but when it reads back the sectors it's getting is in 4K sectors and don't line up to where it's expecting. Perhaps the two drives that aren't working are a different firmware version than the other?

 

[Cableaddict]

Very interesting thought! I am using fairly old docks.

Tonight I'll try running one of these on the backplane, see what happens, and report back. I'm not hopeful, but it's definitely a smart idea.

THANKS.

 

[Cableaddict]

Jared, you nailed it ! It was indeed my slightly old docks.

THANKS !