Problem with Western Digital WD Blue 3TB WD30EZRZ

[dade]

I've purchased a HD western digital Blu with a capacity of 3 Tera to replace an internal 1 Tera hd in a Lacie D2 case. Connected via firewire 800 my imac (imac 27 late 2009) sees only 800 mb and and if I try to format it I can not see 3 tera. Someone can help me or there is no solution. Thanks

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Blue or Green that is the question? Do not think you will ever get 6Gb/ps from FW800 but if you are happy with it well and good. Regarding formatting what OS?

 

[dade]

The system is. High Sierra 10.13.6
The connection speed is not a problem, the HD will be used for Time Machine. The problem is having a 3Tera hd and being able to use only 800 Mb. Thanks

 

[BrianBaughn]

Have you checked the specifications of your particular housing for any limits on hard drive size?

 

[Fishrrman]

Pay attention to Brian's reply 4 above.
It could be due to limitations in the firewire controller board through which you're connecting.

If it's a "bare" 3.5" drive, I suggest you try a USB3/SATA "docking station".
They work very well, and are inexpensive to boot...

 

[dade]

I have bought a usb3 docking station and it works. thanks

 

[mikehalloran]

Ok... using an external HHD when you are on High Sierra is your problem. It's solvable.

Did you try to format APFS (or not at all)?

You need to format your drive HFS+ which is not the default when running OS 10.13.x. If it says the drive will be erased, then do so—that's what you want. Once that is done, all 3TB should be visible. Then follow these instructions:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
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Blue or Green that is the question? Do not think you will ever get 6Gb/ps from FW800 but if you are happy with it well and good. Regarding formatting what OS?

WD Green HDDs were discontinued years ago being replaced by a low power Blue. The Green label is now being used for SSDs.

The best HDD for Time Machine is the WD Red. Same lower power consumption but extra heavy duty bearings. Although designed for NAS which runs 24/7, these are as close to bulletproof for Time Machine as is possible. I have never had one go bad.

A buddy working at Seagate gave me the heads-up on the Reds. 10TB is less than $300US while a 3TB is under $100.
https://www.amazon.com/Red-3TB-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B0719498XY?th=1

Because of sleep issues that affect old iMacs (especially FireWire), I recommend ethernet for Time Machine. Either the old, flat Time Capsules (10 minutes to install a Red) or the WD My Cloud. I buy 1st gen My Cloud Mirrors on eBay, remove the perfectly good 1T Reds and drop a couple of 8–10TB drives (pop the lid, bracket is secured by a single screw, lift up and drop in — 1 minute if you've never done it before). Time Machine is one of the default settings. I don't like that the 2–4 drive versions do RAID 1 as it causes all drives to back up each hour. Instead, I set them as JBOD so that they alternate hourly as Time Machine has done since OS 10.8.

These are the Gen2. Faster for NAS but speed isn't an issue for TimeMachine so I look for used Gen1 housings.
https://www.wd.com/products/personal-cloud-storage.html

 

[DeltaMac]

Not likely fixable with a different hard drive format. It's because of your old LaCie d2 case.
The Lacie d2 has been sold for quite a few years. The current models are not even sold with storage as small as 1TB. All are larger capacity. If the OP has an older model (probably with USB 2.0, rather than the newer USB 3.0), then the 1TB would be the largest available at that time - and that enclosure would not support drives over 2TB. A 3TB (or larger) will only format with 800 MB, because the enclosure interface does not support larger drives. The OP says in post #6 that a USB 3 docking station worked (because it actually supports the larger hard drive 😎 )

 

[mikehalloran]

Not likely fixable with a different hard drive format. It's because of your old LaCie d2 case.
The Lacie d2 has been sold for quite a few years. The current models are not even sold with storage as small as 1TB. All are larger capacity. If the OP has an older model (probably with USB 2.0, rather than the newer USB 3.0), then the 1TB would be the largest available at that time - and that enclosure would not support drives over 2TB. A 3TB (or larger) will only format with 800 MB, because the enclosure interface does not support larger drives. The OP says in post #6 that a USB 3 docking station worked (because it actually supports the larger hard drive 😎 )

The OP has a Firewire housing. No reason it won't handle 3TB. A 2009 iMac has USB 2 and FW800.

I dislike FW on my 2010 — essentially the same machine — as FW has sleep issues beginning with OS 10.8. The only FW device I use anymore is an FW400 audio interface and I never let my iMac go to sleep.

 

[deconstruct60]

The OP has a Firewire housing. No reason it won't handle 3TB. A 2009 iMac has USB 2 and FW800.

A 2009 iMac is completely immaterial to the issue. LaCie has used the ‘d2’ product name for an extremely long time . Here is a 2004 story about one of the iterations of the d2.

https://www.computerworld.com.au/me...-press-release-on-new-triple-interface-hard-/

The number of Intel based Macs in 2004 ? None .

For An 2004 iMac , a 1TB drive would be humongous . ( configs top out at 160GB )
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP69?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

If this is a well over a decade old enclosure there probably is a capacity size cap on the drive that is close to the ancient BIOS limits .

 

[DeltaMac]

This is also not related (directly) to firewire. It's the old interface card - the support chip inside the d2 enclosure.
If the interface chip does not support newer, larger drives (more than 2TB), one of the symptoms is that you get that 800GB. In this case (pun intended!), Disk Utility will show the drive as 800GB [3TB (real capacity) - 2.2TB = .8TB = 800GB]
And the reason is that, assuming that firewire is used, the firewire support chip on that d2 interface doesn't support those big drives.
The current d2 Quadra (which still includes Firewire 800) comes with either 4 or 6TB. So, not a firewire limitation, per se, but a limitation of the interface card used in the older model d2 that the OP has. (the current Quadra also has USB 3, which is significantly faster than the FW800, but NOT on a 2009 iMac - still USB 2 on that, so FW800 is, at least for speed, a better choice on that old Mac.
I am almost always connected to a Firewire 800 storage drive, and don't experience any sleep problems with that. But, it's just a storage device. Maybe your issue is the connection to other kinds of devices (like audio) that I don't ever use, at least on firewire.