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I purchased a Seagate ST4000DX001 4TB SATA Hybrid Drive (SSHD) and installed it into my Mac Pro (six core 3.33 GHZ MacPro5,1) in one of the internal SATA drive bays. However, the system didn't see it at all. Disk Utility didn't show the drive for me to format and the SATA Devices section under Apple System Profiler didn't show the drive listed at all.

The drive works because if I put it into a USB3 enclosure then it works, but since the Mac pro only has USB2 it's pointless for me to use it in a USB3 enclosure.

Why doesn't my Mac Pro see my Seagate 4TB SATA SSHD drive?

share|improve this question
    
Have you tried another SATA cable? – Ian C.♦ Nov 29 '13 at 20:38
1  
@IanC. No, the Mac Pro has drive sleds and built-in SATA. There's no SATA cables attached to the drive itself. Also, I was upgrading a 1TB drive which works so I know that port is good, plus I tried all 4 bays. – Josh Nov 29 '13 at 20:50
    
With the drive connected, please run the following command in terminal and update your post with the output. diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list . You may need to reformat it externally as GUID if it's MBR partition table - such wouldnt't be recognized internally if it exceeds 2.2 TB. As already mentioned, this is a known problem, period, with Mac Pros and drives of this capacity. – njboot Jul 11 '14 at 7:32
up vote 1 down vote

You've done all that I usually do to troubleshoot this in that you already know to use System Profiler to check the SATA bus for devices.

I would reboot the system and reset the NVRAM twice (keep holding the keys down and you'll hear the chime twice) and then re-check the profiler.

Sadly, if the controller doesn't make that device available - you'll need to use it connected to a non-optimal bus while you work with Seagate and/or Apple tech support to determine at a device driver level what settings need to be tweaked or updated to expose that particular drive to your Mac. Let's hope someone has the same drive and can either confirm or deny for their OS X level that the drive works for them.

share|improve this answer
    
Thanks bmike! It must be a hardware issue because the OS X installer, The VMware ESXi installer and VMware ESXi 5.5 all can't see the drive. I'm guessing it's a SATA 3 speed auto-negotiation issue but can't confirm that. – Josh Nov 29 '13 at 20:51
    
I'd also be sure to test that drive in more than one drive bay. It's rare, but a bit of plastic on the connector could make an odd connection on the first place you tried. Also be firm in seating the cable, just in case. Seagate should be good about fielding a call on how to set the drive to default to slower SATA in case it's a negotiation glitch. – bmike♦ Nov 29 '13 at 20:56
up vote 0 down vote

I recently installed a 3 TB drive in a drive bay of my 2008 Mac Pro. When I rebooted it was not recognised and required formatting. However Disk Utility formatted it as a “Logical Volume Group”. I could not set the partition and GUID option and it was not showing the full capacity of the drive.

I Googled the issue and found that 10.8.4 and 10.8.5 have a bug which was causing this problem to occur with drives of 3 TB and greater capacity. The solution was to boot from an earlier version of OS X. I booted from a Snow Leopard boot drive which I keep on a USB Flash Drive and used Disk Utility to successfully re-format and partition the 3 TB drive. I am not sure whether the bug is still present in Mavericks.

I was running 10.8.5 when I encountered the problem I described above - drive not recognised but Disk Utility did offer to format it. However the normal format options were not available with "Logical Volume Group" being the only option.

I did not have a boot volume pre 10.8.4 but did have a Snow Leopard boot volume. When I restarted my Mac Pro with this Snow Leopard volume I was able to use Disk Utility to set the drive to one partition and GUID format. When I rebooted into 10.8.5 the drive was recognised as a normal volume and I have been using it for my Time Machine backup ever since.

While you mention that your problem is that Disk Utility does not see your drive, if you are running 10.8.4 or later it may still be worth trying an earlier version of the OS.

share|improve this answer
1  
Thanks. Were you able to format the drive? If so that's a different issue than mine possibly because the drive didn't even show for me in Disk Utility nor ASP. – Josh Dec 1 '13 at 23:13
up vote 0 down vote

I was running 10.8.5 when I encountered the problem I described above - drive not recognised but Disk Utility did offer to format it. However the normal format options were not available with "Logical Volume Group" being the only option.

I did not have a boot volume pre 10.8.4 but did have a Snow Leopard boot volume. When I restarted my Mac Pro with this Snow Leopard volume I was able to use Disk Utility to set the drive to one partition and GUID format. When I rebooted into 10.8.5 the drive was recognised as a normal volume and I have been using it for my Time Machine backup ever since.

While you mention that your problem is that Disk Utility does not see your drive, if you are running 10.8.4 or later it may still be worth trying an earlier version of the OS.

share|improve this answer
    
Welcome to Stack Exchange Paul! This should be an edit to your earlier answer, not an entirely new answer. Use the edit link on your other answer to add the relevant info to that answer, then delete this one. – Josh Dec 2 '13 at 16:04
    
How do I delete the answer? – Paul Manuel Dec 3 '13 at 19:35
1  
There should be a delete link underneath it, above these comments. If not, you can click "flag" above and choose "other" and explain that you want this deleted because you merged it with the other answer. – Josh Dec 3 '13 at 21:06

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