MP 1,1-5,1 HDD Failures. How to check hardware on a cMP?

[machinesworking]

So I have a heavily modified Mac Pro like most of you.
09 MP upgraded with 2x33GHz Xeon's, 24GB1334 RAM, Sonnet Allegro Pro USB3 card, M.2 XP941 boot drive in PCIe slot, NVME SM951 M.2 for sample storage on PCIe, Radeon 580 gaming GPU, upgraded to 5,1 and Mojave.

I've also run a 5TB HDD for Time Machine along with a 3TB HDD for all types of media. Recently the 3TB drive disappeared, putting it in another drive bay it was found by Disk Utility, but considered unrepairable. I replaced it with a new 4TB drive which recently disappeared as well. Again moving the drive to another bay and it shows on the desktop, is deemed OK by Disk Utility. Pervious to this I was experiencing some CPU overheating warnings. The Time Machine drive has never failed.

All this sounds like maybe system bus failure or too much draw on the power supply to me. I'm just guessing here, but I doin run an awful lot of hardware off of this machine, external firewire sound card, both ethernet ports used for internet and pairing with a MacBook pro, two 7 ports USB3 hubs with external SSDs and various music hardware devices, even the regular USB2 slots are filled.

Anyway, it being a modded for Mojave machine I can't boot into Apples Hardware Test. So is there any other way to find out if I'm experiencing hardware failure? Any direction to take this in would be helpful. My thinking as of now is to put my HDDs into external USB3 enclosures and just forgo the internal SATA bus in general.

 

[bsbeamer]

Install DriveDx and see if it reports errors.

 

[machinesworking]

Install DriveDx and see if it reports errors.

Yeah I'm planning on getting that been recommended etc. I'm just not convinced it's a hard drive issue as much as possibly a hard drive bay issue. Especially since it's been less than two weeks since I replaced the drive that's reporting corrupt files. <-- It's not reporting a corrupt drive though, just corrupt directory etc. Couple that with other issues like errant heating up CPUs etc... I'm still taking your advice though, a guy who used to work at Apple in the hard drive section recommended that same software!

 

[machinesworking]

Installed DriveX, useful tool for sure! The first drive to not mount on this Mac Pro is pretty much toast. The last one is not, shows up as fine in all programs, but it will still not mount at startup regularly.

Some possible problems the Mac Pro might be having with my drives:

First off, the 2009 Mac Pro is specced for a maximum of 8 terabytes of storage internally, or 4 2TB drives.
I've been running it with a 5TB Time Machine HDD, 2TB data, 1TBdata etc. So I don't know, but it's possible that's the main reason. the 5TBTime Machine drive always mounts.

Secondly the PCIe Sonnet 4 port Allegra Pro USB3 hub needed a driver installed that told the OS that the ports could power external devices. I've been running two 7 port USB3 hubs and a terabyte SSD in an USB3 enclosure off of these USB3 ports.

A lot of this seems like low power issues to the HDD drives, so multiple power saps might make the machine prone to not mounting or even seeing HDDs? I don't know? but I'm going to first try removing the 5TB Time Machine drive from the internal SATA bus..

 

[bsbeamer]

What is your BootROM version?
Do each of the drives mount when only using ONE AT A TIME directly in a SATA sled?
Is this on cold boot or warm restart or both?

 

[machinesworking]

What is your BootROM version?
Do each of the drives mount when only using ONE AT A TIME directly in a SATA sled?
Is this on cold boot or warm restart or both?

Not at home Halloween and all. Looking at the big thread on Hard drives not mounting here I'm pretty certain this is a hardware issue related to later versions of the SATA protocol, certain drives like the Western Digital Black 4TB I'm trying to mount power down in a way that the OS loses them, so warm restarts definitely don't work and sometimes cold, as plenty of people have reported with this drive and a few others. I was going to avoid Seagate, might be coincidence but this is the second or third Seagate to go early on me, but the Exos 8TB is working for a friend, server grade and 5 year warranty...