Formatting Hard Drive - Core Storage

[RVijay007]

Hi all, running into a bit of a new situation here. I am running Mavericks with a DIY Fusion Drive on a Mac Pro 3,1 between a 256 SSD and 2TB hard drive. Everything got set up correctly with regards to that.

I have a couple other hard drives in my tower that I want to format. Usually, I just go to Disk Utility, click the hard drive name (not partition name), click the Erase Tab at the top, name the single partition, and hit erase. The output is USUALLY that I see the hard disk on the left, and the recently named partition under it.

However, in Mavericks, I've noticed that anytime I try to format a drive, it automatically creates a new Core Storage volume (new Logical Volume Group with 1 Physical Drive and a new single logical Volume Family). Is this supposed to happen? Is there any way of having the old partition table, or does every drive that gets formatted with Mavericks get formatted with the CoreStorage Logical Volume feature?

Is there anything I should be worried about with regards to my data being kept in a Logical Core Storage Volume rather than the old disk format? I'm not super clear on exactly everything that CoreStorage does and it's pros/cons, so any enlightenment would help. Thanks!!!

 

[Schtumple]

Whilst it's not really anything to worry about (as long as you're backing up), if you're that concerned over Core Storage taking the default, plug the hard drive you want to format in an external bay.

I'm not entirely sure why CS is forcing you into such an odd Fusion Drive setup though, I wasn't aware it could use the SSD as a cache for multiple hard drives to be honest.

 

[RVijay007]

Whilst it's not really anything to worry about (as long as you're backing up), if you're that concerned over Core Storage taking the default, plug the hard drive you want to format in an external bay.

I'm not entirely sure why CS is forcing you into such an odd Fusion Drive setup though, I wasn't aware it could use the SSD as a cache for multiple hard drives to be honest.

To be clear, it's not adding the new drive to the existing Fusion Drive Group, but rather creating a whole separate group for the drive, and I'm not sure why. Below is what my "diskutil cs list" outputs.

Also, two of my drives are in external bays, but the same thing happens when I try to format them as well.

CoreStorage logical volume groups (2 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group B1D0EB6E-D4D0-46D9-AF87-FAEC190BB366
| =========================================================
| Name: Fusion
| Status: Online
| Size: 2255255715840 B (2.3 TB)
| Free Space: 0 B (0 B)
| |
| +-< Physical Volume 198D453D-DFE6-4552-9017-814AE1F9B5CF
| | ----------------------------------------------------
| | Index: 0
| | Disk: disk0s2
| | Status: Online
| | Size: 255716540416 B (255.7 GB)
| |
| +-< Physical Volume 038A8E56-9381-458C-B834-FA5E5D7A6EF7
| | ----------------------------------------------------
| | Index: 1
| | Disk: disk1s2
| | Status: Online
| | Size: 1999539175424 B (2.0 TB)
| |
| +-> Logical Volume Family 3CA2397D-1135-4EBE-8501-F1A825B87D06
| ----------------------------------------------------------
| Encryption Status: Unlocked
| Encryption Type: None
| Conversion Status: NoConversion
| Conversion Direction: -none-
| Has Encrypted Extents: No
| Fully Secure: No
| Passphrase Required: No
| |
| +-> Logical Volume 99550F9E-70B8-434F-B6DA-E8D1991665C1
| ---------------------------------------------------
| Disk: disk6
| Status: Online
| Size (Total): 2249351610368 B (2.2 TB)
| Conversion Progress: -none-
| Revertible: No
| LV Name: Macintosh HD
| Volume Name: Macintosh HD
| Content Hint: Apple_HFS
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 59FAFC19-C92B-4DBE-BE3D-55B58F0C3AB8
=========================================================
Name: Media Backup
Status: Online
Size: 3000249008128 B (3.0 TB)
Free Space: 0 B (0 B)
|
+-< Physical Volume EE62322D-AD3C-438B-A4CC-287DD4277F40
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 0
| Disk: disk5s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 3000249008128 B (3.0 TB)
|
+-> Logical Volume Family 24FDC5D2-9D8F-47CF-9197-E8D8B5A9477E
----------------------------------------------------------
Encryption Status: Unlocked
Encryption Type: None
Conversion Status: NoConversion
Conversion Direction: -none-
Has Encrypted Extents: No
Fully Secure: No
Passphrase Required: No
|
+-> Logical Volume 8CD86276-4AD4-4769-95A2-1AF2C6584B29
---------------------------------------------------
Disk: disk7
Status: Online
Size (Total): 2999913455616 B (3.0 TB)
Conversion Progress: -none-
Revertible: No
LV Name: Media Backup
Volume Name: Media Backup
Content Hint: Apple_HFS

 

[Schtumple]

OH! Ok gotcha. That's really strange that it's doing it for external, kinda renders them useless if they're unplugged surely?

Sorry I can't be of more help!