My MAC Pro 2008 eats hard drives

[oz1]

I am setting up hard drives in a new MAC Pro 2008 octocore.

I have installed 3 x 1TB WD Black drives in bays 2, 3 & 4. The ones in bays 3 & 4 are fine. The drive in bay 2 installed OK but next day had disappeared from the desktop. I fired up disk utility which recognised that a device was present but it was not recognised as a WD drive. Instead, it just said "media" with capacity of 0 bytes. I sent the WD drive back to the supplier who gave me a replacement. I installed that in bay 2 & exactly the same thing happened.

I tried the dead drive in an external USB case & had the same. I also tried it on a PC which crashed on boot.

i got on to Applecare who said that I had either 2 bad drives (pretty unlikely) or a dodgy bay 2 socket & I should try another drive ($160 a time - great!). With some trepidation, I moved one of my good HDs into bay 2 as a test & it's been running OK for 3 days which suggests that the socket is OK.

Would appreciate any bright ideas as two consecutive HD failures seems unlikely.

 

[cmaier]

I am setting up hard drives in a MAC Pro 2008 octocore.

I have installed 3 x 1TB WD Black drives in bays 2, 3 & 4. The ones in bays 3 & 4 are fine. The drive in bay 2 installed OK but next day had disappeared from the desktop. I fired up disk utility which recognised that a device was present but it was not recognised as a WD drive. Instead, it just said "media" with capacity of 0 bytes. I sent the WD drive back to the supplier who gave me a replacement. I installed that in bay 2 & exactly the same thing happened.

i got on to Applecare who said that I had either 2 bad drives (pretty unlikely) or a dodgy bay 2 socket. With some trepidation, I moved one of my good HDs into bay 2 as a test & it'

don't leave us hanging!

 

[oz1]

don't leave us hanging!

Will try not to. The second dead HD has gone back to the supplier "for investigation" but they are implying that it's my fault. I bought another HD from another supplier but it ain't a WD.

 

[cmaier]

Will try not to. The second dead HD has gone back to the supplier "for investigation" but they are implying that it's my fault. I bought another HD from another supplier but it ain't a WD.

Ah. Your post was initially missing the last sentence.

Anyway, I don't find it at all odd that two drives would fail. I have three systems with 4-drive RAID, and another system with 2-drive RAID. I've had a couple of drives DOA, and have had to replace failed drives about once a year.

Luck of the draw. I'm about to buy another 10 drives to upgrade some of the systems, and I'd be shocked if they all last more than a week.

 

[oz1]

I've had a couple of drives DOA, and have had to replace failed drives about once a year.

Luck of the draw. I'm about to buy another 10 drives to upgrade some of the systems, and I'd be shocked if they all last more than a week.

That's appalling. I have had 10 Seagates running in various PCs for the last 6 years & never had a single failure. Maybe I should have stuck with them but i heard some negative stuff about Seagate quality of late. Anyways, the next two drives will be Samsungs

 

[jons]

That's appalling. I have had 10 Seagates running in various PCs for the last 6 years & never had a single failure. Maybe I should have stuck with them but i heard some negative stuff about Seagate quality of late. Anyways, the next two drives will be Samsungs

Hard drive of all type and brand fail all the time. The failure rate is actually quite high. In your case I wouldn't think two in a row would be bad. Maybe an problem with the drive's firmware?

FWIW, I have used Seagate drives for 10 years and only once had a bad one, and it went bad over time, it wasn't DOA. I have had several WDs as well, and all have been good.

 

[cmaier]

That's appalling. I have had 10 Seagates running in various PCs for the last 6 years & never had a single failure. Maybe I should have stuck with them but i heard some negative stuff about Seagate quality of late. Anyways, the next two drives will be Samsungs

I only ever use Seagates.

Like I said, luck of the draw. That's why I always use raid 1 or raid 5. Drive goes down, I pull it out, swap in a new one, and go exercise my seagate warranty. Never even have to shut down the NAS. (I am willing to take the risk and assume another drive won't go down while I'm rebuilding the array.)

 

[Tesselator]

You know about the firmware fiasco with the Black drives right? They blew chunks with the firmware code that caused a bunch of data integrity problems after the drives are in use for a little while but not right away. You're problem might be related. I guess you can flash the drives - I dunno I've never flashed firmware onto a drive before. But if you got a couple of the ones from the lots that were bad that might explain it. I dunno if there's a way to tell by serial number or not but if there is there's probably a web-site somewhere that lists the bad ranges. Anyway, this might be something worth looking into. Have a search.

 

[cmaier]

You know about the firmware fiasco with the Black drives right? They blew chunks with the firmware code that caused a bunch of data integrity problems after the drives are in use for a little while but not right away. You're problem might be related. I guess you can flash the drives - I dunno I've never flashed firmware onto a drive before. But if you got a couple of the ones from the lots that were bad that might explain it. I dunno if there's a way to tell by serial number or not but if there is there's probably a web-site somewhere that lists the bad ranges. Anyway, this might be something worth looking into. Have a search.

I thought that was the seagate 1.5's

 

[Tesselator]

I thought that was the seagate 1.5's

I'm remembering wrong? Hmm, could be. OK, or as Roseanne Roseanna Danna would say: "Nevermind..."

I thought for sure that was the 1TB Black tho. :-/

 

[costabunny]

I'm remembering wrong? Hmm, could be. OK, or as Roseanne Roseanna Danna would say: "Nevermind..."

I thought for sure that was the 1TB Black tho. :-/

I think they both had 'issues' - WD with integrity and Seagate with Dog-slow performance.

(no personal exp with the WD's but I had 6 of the 1.5 seagates that were lemons for about 8weeks until I got the second firmware update (SD1A sucked melons, but SD1B is whoooosh in the Mac Pro) ..

still this is a never ending cycle - every so often one manufacturer is the worst for some reason or another. Then it changes around.

 

[ekwipt]

Be careful, my logic board was stuffed on my macpro and it "ate" 3 hd when i 1st bought it had to replace logic board to fix the issue

 

[Tesselator]

I think they both had 'issues' - WD with integrity and Seagate with Dog-slow performance.

(no personal exp with the WD's but I had 6 of the 1.5 seagates that were lemons for about 8weeks until I got the second firmware update (SD1A sucked melons, but SD1B is whoooosh in the Mac Pro) ..

still this is a never ending cycle - every so often one manufacturer is the worst for some reason or another. Then it changes around.

Thanks Costabunny,

Leave it to the Maltites to straighten things out!