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bigpoppa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 23, 2005
239
239
Seattle, WA USA
I bought a 16tb SATA drive and stuck it in an external case linked by USB. Formatted it just fine with HFS. Then after a month I wanted to try sliding it into the case and use a direct connection through SATA but the system doesn't see the formatted drive. Any ideas that would help?
 

arw

macrumors 65816
Aug 31, 2010
1,227
974
Last edited:

bigpoppa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 23, 2005
239
239
Seattle, WA USA
With “into the case“ I suspect you mean an internal bay of the Mac?
Normally it should work. What is the exact model of the drive?
Some drives, apparently, are only detected on cold boots.
Do you see it in Disk Utility or in Terminal with
Code:
diskutil list
It‘s highly unlikely the specific SATA port is faulty but you could try another bay.
Tried all the SATA ports, still nothing.
 

zedex

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2018
312
134
Perth, WA
It‘s highly unlikely the specific SATA port is faulty but you could try another bay.

Before you drive yourself mad, I would definitely verify that BAYS 1-4 work by inserting another known good regular capacity HDD or SSD.

BAYS 1-4 can collectively die (if you want to know more see my explanation here SATA BAYS NOT WORKING )

Even if they do die, BAYS 5-6 will still work [known as UPPER and LOWER].

Once confirmed, troubleshooting will be isolated to implementing remedies identified with the 'high capacity HDD' issue.
 
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