How to detect or check if the SATA hard drive dead or can still be used?

[lovecd]

Got a 2013 imac 27", which has 120GB flash SSD and 3TB mechanical SATA drive equipped, the previous owner delete the fusion drive configuration and make it two separate drives. However, the 3TB drive is unable to be used with errors when formatting, and now is not listed under diskutil at all. I tried to boot it from recovery mood and run that diskutil again, and can't see it listed there either. Can I conclude that the 3TB sata drive is completely dead or failed? Is there a way to check if it can still be detected and can make it work again?

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

 

[velocityg4]

Sounds dead to me. Time to plug in an external. Unless you want to tear it apart to replace the internal drive.

 

[lovecd]

Sounds dead to me. Time to plug in an external. Unless you want to tear it apart to replace the internal drive.

Thanks, I may try to replace the 120gb ssd with a larger capacity flash, and remove that 3tb one as well.

 

[velocityg4]

Thanks, I may try to replace the 120gb ssd with a larger capacity flash, and remove that 3tb one as well.

That sounds like a good plan. Once a hard drive gets all buggy. Throw them out. Even if you could, somehow, get it working again. You can't rely on it and it would probably just fail sooner rather than later. I'm guessing this is why the prior owner deleted the Fusion drive.

 

[lovecd]

That sounds like a good plan. Once a hard drive gets all buggy. Throw them out. Even if you could, somehow, get it working again. You can't rely on it and it would probably just fail sooner rather than later. I'm guessing this is why the prior owner deleted the Fusion drive.

That make sense, thanks for your comments!

 

[OFLawyer]

I have the same computer and the hard drive failed. The SSD blade is on the back of the and is really not worth replacing as you would have to remove the motherboard. On the other hand replacing the hard drive with an SSD is pretty ease once you get the need parts. I got mine from OWC. I put a 4Tb SSD in mine and it really sped up the machine. You can get a video on how to replace the drive on macsales.com. Good luck.

 

[glenthompson]

Another option is to connect an external SSD and boot from it. Much easier than splitting the case.

 

[velocityg4]

If you do replace the internal SSD. Since you'll have it open. I'd upgrade the CPU. If you don't already have the i7 for that model.

 

[lovecd]

I have the same computer and the hard drive failed. The SSD blade is on the back of the and is really not worth replacing as you would have to remove the motherboard. On the other hand replacing the hard drive with an SSD is pretty ease once you get the need parts. I got mine from OWC. I put a 4Tb SSD in mine and it really sped up the machine. You can get a video on how to replace the drive on macsales.com. Good luck.

Yeah, understand it will be much easier just replace the SATA drive with ssd, but that’s still slower than pcie blade ssd, right?

 

[lovecd]

If you do replace the internal SSD. Since you'll have it open. I'd upgrade the CPU. If you don't already have the i7 for that model.

This one already got I7 cpu installed, but that’s a good point though.

 

[Fishrrman]

I recall that back in 2013/14 there was a "bad run" of Seagate 3tb HDD's in the fusion drive models.

Sounds like what you have.
Apple once had a free replacement program on these, but that's long-gone now.

I like glenthompson's advice in reply 6 above.
I'd just leave the 3tb drive "dead, but in-place".
You could use the 128gb internal SSD as either the boot drive or as a "backup boot".
Get an external USB3 SSD, then set that up to be an external boot drive.

For an external, I'd suggest the Samsung t7 "Shield"...

 

[lovecd]

I recall that back in 2013/14 there was a "bad run" of Seagate 3tb HDD's in the fusion drive models.

Sounds like what you have.
Apple once had a free replacement program on these, but that's long-gone now.

I like glenthompson's advice in reply 6 above.
I'd just leave the 3tb drive "dead, but in-place".
You could use the 128gb internal SSD as either the boot drive or as a "backup boot".
Get an external USB3 SSD, then set that up to be an external boot drive.

For an external, I'd suggest the Samsung t7 "Shield"...

Thanks for the advise!

 

[lovecd]

Here is the update. I got the screen opened and removed that 3TB hard drive, get it connected externally with enclosure, it can be detected through diskutil tool, but shows 800GB capacity only, I can get it formatted without errors. But the question though, why it shows only 800GB out of 3TB? Is there a way to get the whole capacity back?

Thanks,

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Here is the update. I got the screen opened and removed that 3TB hard drive, get it connected externally with enclosure, it can be detected through diskutil tool, but shows 800GB capacity only, I can get it formatted without errors. But the question though, why it shows only 800GB out of 3TB? Is there a way to get the whole capacity back?

Thanks,

Try repartition the whole disk instead of formatting.
Maybe the previous owner partitioned it to 2 different partitions.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I got the screen opened and removed that 3TB hard drive, get it connected externally with enclosure, it can be detected through diskutil tool, but shows 800GB capacity only, I can get it formatted without errors. But the question though, why it shows only 800GB out of 3TB?"

What version of the OS are you using?

Try this:
We are going to erase the 3tb drive.
Connect the drive and open disk utility.
Now... VERY IMPORTANT... check to see if the version of disk utility you're using has a "view" menu.
If it does, the go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".

Now... look at "the list on the left".
You should see the 3tb drive, there may actually be several "lines" pertaining to it.
You want to click on "the top line" that represents the physical drive itself.
Then click the erase button.

Does it now erase to "full capacity"?
If it won't, I'd suspect some kind of hardware/controller failure inside, and junk the drive.

 

[lovecd]

OP wrote:
"I got the screen opened and removed that 3TB hard drive, get it connected externally with enclosure, it can be detected through diskutil tool, but shows 800GB capacity only, I can get it formatted without errors. But the question though, why it shows only 800GB out of 3TB?"

What version of the OS are you using?

Try this:
We are going to erase the 3tb drive.
Connect the drive and open disk utility.
Now... VERY IMPORTANT... check to see if the version of disk utility you're using has a "view" menu.
If it does, the go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".

Now... look at "the list on the left".
You should see the 3tb drive, there may actually be several "lines" pertaining to it.
You want to click on "the top line" that represents the physical drive itself.
Then click the erase button.

Does it now erase to "full capacity"?
If it won't, I'd suspect some kind of hardware/controller failure inside, and junk the drive.

I did format it with “show all devices” at diskutil tool, and only still see 746Gb shows up, what happened is it was not partitioned at all when connected, so, I go ahead to create 1 “full” partition, but only 746GB can be seen and accessed. Have it connected with windows laptop and got the same result. Try googling it, and found some comments on YouTube with solution by installing Intel RST 10.1 driver, but can’t find that version any more, is this worth trying? Any thoughts?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I did format it with “show all devices” at diskutil tool, and only still see 746Gb shows up"

Do you have access to a PC running Windows?
I'd connect it to that, and see if it would format to full capacity in Windows.

If it does, then I'd take it back to the Mac, and try disk utility on it again.

 

[lovecd]

OP wrote:
"I did format it with “show all devices” at diskutil tool, and only still see 746Gb shows up"

Do you have access to a PC running Windows?
I'd connect it to that, and see if it would format to full capacity in Windows.

If it does, then I'd take it back to the Mac, and try disk utility on it again.

I did get it connected with PC windows, but unfortunately unable to get full capacity either, just 746Gb available. Is Intel RST 10.1 driver still available to download?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I did get it connected with PC windows, but unfortunately unable to get full capacity either, just 746Gb available."

Just some speculation. I'm not an expert on hard drive design.

I'm thinking that a 3tb drive would have more than one platter inside, along with a second read/write head (actuator?).

Possibly 2 platters, double-sided, with each platter around 750gb capacity?
(4x750=3,000gb or 3tb)?

Could something have failed...
- controller board
- read/write heads
... that would interfere with reads/writes on 3 of the 4 "sides" of the platters? And thus, all that's working now is "one side", which formats out to 746gb? That might explain why you get the same results on a Mac and a PC.

Again, I remember an Apple recall/warranty program on iMacs from this period that was limited to those Macs with the 3tb Seagate drives inside (as part of a fusion drive setup).

Again, just speculation...

 

[lovecd]

"I did get it connected with PC windows, but unfortunately unable to get full capacity either, just 746Gb available."

Just some speculation. I'm not an expert on hard drive design.

I'm thinking that a 3tb drive would have more than one platter inside, along with a second read/write head (actuator?).

Possibly 2 platters, double-sided, with each platter around 750gb capacity?
(4x750=3,000gb or 3tb)?

Could something have failed...
- controller board
- read/write heads
... that would interfere with reads/writes on 3 of the 4 "sides" of the platters? And thus, all that's working now is "one side", which formats out to 746gb? That might explain why you get the same results on a Mac and a PC.

Again, I remember an Apple recall/warranty program on iMacs from this period that was limited to those Macs with the 3tb Seagate drives inside (as part of a fusion drive setup).

Again, just speculation...

Thanks for the comments, I think I will recycle this drive, it's not worth spending more time on doing diagnose on it.