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Mac Pro 2010 Future Proof Fail

J

jon10

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 7, 2015
16
0
Hi, firstly i'd like to offer thanks for the fantastic resource you offer on this forum.

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 2.8 Nehalam (mac pro 2.8 qcx/3x1g/1tb/5770/sd).
I'm running Snow Leopoard.

There was a power cut yesterday and ever since the machine has failed to boot up.
I ran disc utility and found an error on the disc. Tried to repair it and it told me the disc couldnt be repaired. So it appears the hard drive is dead.
My problem is that both my documents and all of my programs were on the same hard drive (I know, I know i'm an idiot). I have the full Adobe suite, office, final cut, Logic etc etc.

So my first question is:
I've read that it can be possilble to boot up from an external drive running my OS to possibly retrieve what may have survived? Any documents would be great but i really want to retrieve my applications. I have the original DVD install discs that came with the machine; but i'm told that these don't contain the drivers to install on an externl drive and I'd require a retail disc?

My second question is:
Now that the drive has died it seems a good time to refit the machine. I'm wanting to get at least another 3 years out of it and would like to improve drive speeds and general performance overall. I was thinking of possibly installing an SSD? and a seperate drive for my applications. Any thoughts anyone has on updating the machine would be greatly appreciated.

My huge thanks for any help anyone may offer regarding my woes.
Thanks.
 
Pull that HDD out from your Mac, don't stress it now. Hopefuly it only affect the OS, but not the data.

There are plenty of HDD bay inside your Mac, no need to go external. Buy another HDD (or better SSD e.g. 850 Evo) and plug that in (in case a 2.5" SSD, plug that in the lower optical bay and leave it there is fine).

Install the OSX from your disk to that new drive.

Shut down your machine. And then plug the old HDD back in.

Boot from the new drive and see if able to recover the data. If not, remove the problematic HDD again (of course after shut down).

Get a data recovery software, test it with a USB stick etc. And then install the old HDD back in and use that data recovery software to recover your data as much as possible.

If still doesn't work, and you must recover the data, then you have to go for the professional data recovery service, which is quite expensive.

Anyway, for the upgrade, there are plenty of threads about that. You may study them and ask questions. But in general, it's about upgrade the CPU to X5690, get a PCIe SSD, get a new GPU, install more RAM, get a PCIe USB3.0 card, may be upgrade to Wi-Fi ac... decide what you want, and use the search function, then you will get the answer.
 
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A spinning hard drive's directory is prone to corruption when power is cut. Before you try anything else use Disk Warrior to repair the drive and the directory structure. You might be able to rescue your data if you need it.
 
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jon10, you have done a good job demonstrating the importance of:
  1. Backing Up
  2. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
I sincerely hope you get your data back then get Time Machine running AND a UPS to protect it all.

For back ups, I use Time Machine and a pair of external drives I rotate on- and off-site for safety, but I also backup all project data (my boot, sample data and work drives are SSDs) on two internal spinners so I will never have to tell a client a project is lost. Backup drives are very cheap insurance.

As far as updating your 5,1 Mac, yes, SSDs and a CPU upgrade to W3680/90 or X5680/90 will double your machine's speed. Well worth it! I did the upgrade from a 4,1 over three years ago and my machine does yeoman's duty in my recording studio. SSDs are a no-brainer, and if you work a lot in audio, especially with VI's, you will love the CPU upgrade. Single core performance is also significantly enhanced, so your machine will feel snappier no matter what the task.

If you only have 3 gigs of RAM, bumping that up to 16 or 24 gigs will make things run a lot better.
 
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Well if you don't already have an SSD I'd say you've waited for too long. No need to go for the most expensive ones, even a basic SSD fitted in the second optical bay will make a tremendous difference, that's the best single upgrade you can afford yourself (and maybe a bit more memory, 3GB is far from being enough even for basic usage, a 12GB RAM kit should be, 6 if you're still running Snow Leopard and don't intend to upgrade, maybe more depending on your usage). God you must see the spinning beachball so often I don't want to even imagine.

For recovery you can try to boot on the DVD, launch "Disk Utility" from the menu bar and try to fix your drive but there's little chance this will fix it. Otherwise you'll have to install a new system on another drive (a brand new SSD ?) and try to recover your files from there (your original DVD is a perfect fit, it just might not work on a more recent mac that the one it came with). If the damaged drive doesn't even mount on the desktop, DiskWarrior is the only software known to be capable of miracles. It's damn expensive but worth every penny, I'm running a DiskWarrior recovery right now on a failed 6TB drive filled with files, and hoping to get back at least 95% of them.
 
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Mr great thanks to all of the above for your considered response. My mahine has 10GB (I just listed the original model before I upgraded the memory) and until now I've been pleased with its performance but the crash ha made me feel the upgrade is due. I also agree I've waited a bit long to instal SSD, I think becasue when thet first arrived on the scene they were so expensive I've always thought of the as such since but in actual fact they're very reasonable now.

From whats been said above the best course of action would be add SSD drive, install OS on this drive with DVD disk. Once up and running seee if the dead drive is accesible. If not try the disk warrior route. Do I have this right?
Is the 850 EVO generally regarded as a good model?

Would it be wise to add another drive soley for applications as well?

In regrads CPU my machine came with the Neharlam processsor just before the Westmere upgrade if I remember rightly? At the time I remember being told that upgrading the neharlam U wasn't posssible? But I apologies for my ignorance in these things.

Again my great thanks to all for your assistance and insight.
Jon
 
In addition to an SSD I'd suggest getting a low cost internal hard drive (e.g. Western Digital Green series) to act as a dedicated Time Machine backup. It's great having it protecting you in the background while you work.
 
From whats been said above the best course of action would be add SSD drive, install OS on this drive with DVD disk. Once up and running seee if the dead drive is accesible. If not try the disk warrior route. Do I have this right?
Click to expand...
That's it, well that would be my approach if you intend to buy an SSD.
Would it be wise to add another drive soley for applications as well?
Click to expand...
The SSD should hold the system and applications to make them snappy and fast to load. Some of the room left can be used for frequently used files as well. Now SSDs tend to be of smaller capacity so if you feel tight, a low cost hard drive can get you huge storage for a bargain to hold all your heavy files and a backup. Hard drives can give you a second chance of getting back the data in case of failure, SSDs don't. They're also better suited for long term storage.
Is the 850 EVO generally regarded as a good model?
Click to expand...
It looks like a good choice, be sure to avoid the previous generation (840, 840 EVO) which had issues.
 
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jon10 said:
Hi, firstly i'd like to offer thanks for the fantastic resource you offer on this forum.

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 2.8 Nehalam (mac pro 2.8 qcx/3x1g/1tb/5770/sd).
I'm running Snow Leopoard.

There was a power cut yesterday and ever since the machine has failed to boot up.
I ran disc utility and found an error on the disc. Tried to repair it and it told me the disc couldnt be repaired. So it appears the hard drive is dead.
My problem is that both my documents and all of my programs were on the same hard drive (I know, I know i'm an idiot). I have the full Adobe suite, office, final cut, Logic etc etc.

So my first question is:
I've read that it can be possilble to boot up from an external drive running my OS to possibly retrieve what may have survived? Any documents would be great but i really want to retrieve my applications. I have the original DVD install discs that came with the machine; but i'm told that these don't contain the drivers to install on an externl drive and I'd require a retail disc?

My second question is:
Now that the drive has died it seems a good time to refit the machine. I'm wanting to get at least another 3 years out of it and would like to improve drive speeds and general performance overall. I was thinking of possibly installing an SSD? and a seperate drive for my applications. Any thoughts anyone has on updating the machine would be greatly appreciated.

My huge thanks for any help anyone may offer regarding my woes.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Have you tried running a recovery from optical disc or recovery partition?
Booting externally can be accomplished via firewire on MP towers. Do you have any back-ups of your data?

Upgrade ideas:
Samsung 850 Pro SSD 256 GB,
Tempo SSD PCIe adaptor (this will add 6 Gb/s SATA to your MP)
Upgrade the RAM (OWC has some great deals on Memory, 6GB-12GB would really help with your workload)
 
My great thanks Benjaprud.
Hi Justmyopinon, I havent tried recovery from optical disc (this is the disc that ships with the machine yes?) I would partition the drive that disc utility says can't be repared?
 
No, no, no. Power down, and remove the faulty drive.

Buy and SSD/HDD, install Snow Leopard on the new drive using the optical disk.

After you are satisfied the new SSD/HDD is working ok, power down and install the faulty drive in a spare drive bay.

Then run Disk Warrior, or other data recovery tool, to try and recover your data. If nothing else, just try the Migration Assistant and get your stuff off the faulty drive - probably won't work, but worth a try.


jon10 said:
My great thanks Benjaprud.
Hi Justmyopinon, I havent tried recovery from optical disc (this is the disc that ships with the machine yes?) I would partition the drive that disc utility says can't be repared?
Click to expand...
 
jon10 said:
There was a power cut yesterday and ever since the machine has failed to boot up.
Click to expand...
Quick question - did you have the disk write cache enabled on that drive?

If yes, then corruption after a power failure would be expected if the disk were in active use at the time.

The only internal drive that it's safe to enable the write cache on is the Seagate SSHD.

A UPS helps, but unless you have the system set to automatically shutdown or suspend before the UPS runs out you can still get a corruption.
 
Thanks Aidenshaw; unfortunately yes this was seleceted.

I've attempted to boot from recovery mode in Lion and reinstall os x to another hard drive that could boot up from there.
Unfortunately when it asks me to select a drive to install on it only shows the recovery drive greyed out and unselectable.
It isnt recognising my external drive? Please forgive my ignorance in these matters.
Many thanks for all of the helpful advice I have received here.
 
my great thanks for all of the above responses.

I took your advice and installed an 850 evo and installed osx onto this drive. I was able to boot up and access the old drive that way. The good news is that all of the data and applications are intact. The bad news is that the applications wont load. I think this is due to the application now missing licensing information that may have been unsynced or lost in the crash.

To try and rectify this i tried to reinstall osx mavericks on the damaged drive in recovery mode to see if I can get a boot up and then do a time machine backup. My problem is that when it comes to selecting which drive to install Mavericks on the HD drive is greyed out and tells me the drive is locked. Is there anyway to unlock the drive to do an install?

My huge thanks again for your help.
 
jon10 said:
my great thanks for all of the above responses.

I took your advice and installed an 850 evo and installed osx onto this drive. I was able to boot up and access the old drive that way. The good news is that all of the data and applications are intact. The bad news is that the applications wont load.
Click to expand...

You DID back up your data already, right?
 
Just a side question... back in the day, Norton Utilities (V3.x I think) was an awesome data recovery tool. At some point, the better recovery options started getting dialed back and eventually removed. These days, what is the best App for really scrubbing a failed directory to recover ALL that can be recovered?
 
i maxed out a 2010 cMP last year but sold it right away after a few projects (actually made profit on it).

Anyway, it was a great machine, but like mentioned in this thread, the processor technology is really old by todays standards and single threading is not as good as more modern CPUs like Skylake.

However, it's a heavy duty machine and definitely faster than a lot of modern desktops if you're doing multi-tasking and multi-processor heavy applications like After Effects, etc.

And the fact that you can put in any GPU is really great too, especially if you don't want to go the Hackintosh route.

But it's aging fast and I definitely don't recommend it right now, unless you get a really awesome deal. It all depends on what you do, a lot of times even an iMac will do.
 
Bytehoven said:
Just a side question... back in the day, Norton Utilities (V3.x I think) was an awesome data recovery tool. At some point, the better recovery options started getting dialed back and eventually removed. These days, what is the best App for really scrubbing a failed directory to recover ALL that can be recovered?
Click to expand...
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard - http://www.easeus.com/mac-data-recovery-software/ (free limited trial)

It will read the entire disk (slow!) and find files based on their signatures. Most files (other than simple text) have some identifiable header (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#File_header for an example).

There are also faster scans which look for metadata to resurrect partitions and file records.
 
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