Help Please Hard drive won't show Mac pro lost all my work

[IowaLynn]

I also don't understand how a windows partition has affected the OSX partition, something about happens when Windows decide to, at any point, assign new or change a windows drive letter of your bootable system GPT partition.

I wonder can I delete the windows partition and recover my work on the OSX side of the hard drive? The OSX has my work that is not backed up.

What would be the best way if I don't have another OSX machine to follow the instructions.

I can log into OSX still. As the OSX is in hard drive bay 1 the hard drive with problem “invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000″. is in hard drive bay 2

Upgrades in OS X could alter the partition number, create a new partition, change Windows partition to not be the same and maybe not be within the first 4 partitions.

I use NTFS for OS X along with HFS for Windows, both from Paragon Software to allow seamless access to drives.

 

[Zobec]

Demigod Mac, I was lucky to be able to recover the data from the hard drive the 2 OS's were on different drives. Other wise I would have had to have a 2nd mac machine to save the data. Something I don't have.

IowaLynn@ That is interesting to hear that updating OSX could create errors. The disappearing hard drive error started with a invalid BS_impBoot in boot block : 000000. I have not updated from 10.8 it has been that for a while.

Regarding configuring time machine, I read to excluded spotlight from indexing files http://macperformanceguide.com/Optimizing-Spotlight.html In time machine the back up drive is excluded from spotlight I think, to help with cpu speed. Re-started back up.

That sounds great I can format the drive to exFAT, I do have one question about this, is there any limits to the size of a file that can be moved from a OSX drive to Windows drive while using exFAT? For example say a single file that is 2Gig, 4Gig so on… I am just wondering, is there is a limit to file size transfers between OS's that is all. I don't think it will affect any files in this case, I just think I have heard that once before not sure if that is correct or not.

 

[DPUser]

OP, you are a fortunate person.

How many backups did you make? If you don't have at least three copies of your data, on three different physical drives, you are living dangerously.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

That sounds great I can format the drive to exFAT, I do have one question about this, is there any limits to the size of a file that can be moved from a OSX drive to Windows drive while using exFAT? For example say a single file that is 2Gig, 4Gig so on… I am just wondering, is there is a limit to file size transfers between OS's that is all. I don't think it will affect any files in this case, I just think I have heard that once before not sure if that is correct or not.

exFAT is a modern specification, I think the latest of them all, and as such, can support very large files in excess of 4GB.

You can read about exFAT here

 

[Zobec]

DPUser yes, I am lucky this time, it was a jolt. I did not know a hard drive could vanish like that without no warning.

As of now I have one time machine back up of the important files/work on the mac. Though after all this I am considering to get another new hard drive perhaps a WD 1TB VelociRaptor 3.5" Internal HDD for work purposes. My mac is a model 5.1 it does not have thunderbolt or USB3 so I am limited in interfaces I probably would get a thuderbolt or USB3 type of external drive I don't think that is an option for this machine.

With a WD 1TB VelociRaptor 3.5 I would use the now in use 2TB drive as a possible candidate for another back up disk for files/data.

Has anyone any thoughts on a WD 1TB VelociRaptor 3.5" Internal HDD? I tried looking for a 2TB 10000 rpm but I don't think they exist as new forms such as thunderbolt and USB3 exist

I read about ESATA has better speed than my firewire 800Mb external drive I don't think my mac currently supports eSata well at least without a card add-on. All internal bay drives in my mac are full at the moment. I can free one of the drive bays, the other bays 1-3 have different things.

The Pcie slot 1 is used by the GPU ATI Radeon HD graphics card 5870 1Gig

I guess this is as good as any time to ask as I can't see any harm in the question it is totally separate from the hard drive issue, that has been on my mind for a time. If I wanted to update the graphics card what would one suggest? A card that is more powerful and better for 3D modelling, than the one I currently have, I am not a professional, I think the term is enthusiast. So I guess that would be in mind when look at graphics card. The card I used has worked really well and and I have never really had any issues with it.

I don't think I can use a 2 sized slot, not sure of the terminology but there are graphic cards that take up 2 slots. Slot 2 is used up.

Slot 2 is used by a raid controller that holds 3 small SSDs connected to it. They are not run in any configuration.

Thuderbolt seems to have the fastest interface, that seems like not an option

After a back up is created of the drive, is getting rid of bootcamp the best option? Before when I asked disk Utility to repair the hard drive it came up with the Error:couldn't unmount disk.

@dmylrea ah yes thanks, it was fat32 that had the 4gig limit from file to file

 

[IowaLynn]

Look on OWC for CallDigit for a USB3/eSATA III PCIe card.

Consider a PCIe adapter (not controller) to support a Apple/Samsung blade for your system. Or SATA III PCIe SSD card controller for up to two 1TB SSDs.

As a long time Raptor and VelociRaptor owner and SCSI before that, harder now to justify - the silence of SSD plus speed improvement.
Even 4TB and above drives offer excellent performance and cost.

Use those three open remaining slots though.

 

[Zobec]

I made a mistake the GPU slot already takes up 2 slots, the 3rd slot has a raid card as far as I understand each slot has different speed uses. So am I correct in assuming that putting for example a USB3 card in slot 4 or 5 which has x4 that it will not perform as fast as if I was to place the card in slot 1 x16, were the GPU is held?

@IowaLynn In the future would something like this be okay
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/FASTA6GU3PRO/

maybe 2x1TB drives
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

These modern drives use, USB3, eSata, thunderbolt drives they seem to be able to transfer and write information fast.

What is the difference, the positives and negatives between using external/internal hard drives for work purposes? would any one like to share their thoughts on this. I believed in the past it would be best to get hard drives that connected internally they seemed to offer the best performance is this all changed with USB3/esata thunderbolt external drives?

I am still getting the unmount error when I try to repair the 2TB disk drive, has this drive been corrupted? Is there a test I can do, to see if that drive is okay? it does not seem like it is okay. Time machine has backed up the files, and I have the important files from bootcamp now I guess I should either delete the bootcamp partition or erase the whole drive. would you use disk utility to delete partitions? I am reading that the unmount error means I cannot erase the drive is this true?

 

[IowaLynn]

I made a mistake the GPU slot already takes up 2 slots, the 3rd slot has a raid card as far as I understand each slot has different speed uses. So am I correct in assuming that putting for example a USB3 card in slot 4 or 5 which has x4 that it will not perform as fast as if I was to place the card in slot 1 x16, were the GPU is held?

@IowaLynn In the future would something like this be okay
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/FASTA6GU3PRO/

maybe 2x1TB drives
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

These modern drives use, USB3, eSata, thunderbolt drives they seem to be able to transfer and write information fast.

What is the difference, the positives and negatives between using external/internal hard drives for work purposes? would any one like to share their thoughts on this. I believed in the past it would be best to get hard drives that connected internally they seemed to offer the best performance is this all changed with USB3/esata thunderbolt external drives?

I am still getting the unmount error when I try to repair the 2TB disk drive, has this drive been corrupted? Is there a test I can do, to see if that drive is okay? it does not seem like it is okay. Time machine has backed up the files, and I have the important files from bootcamp now I guess I should either delete the bootcamp partition or erase the whole drive. would you use disk utility to delete partitions? I am reading that the unmount error means I cannot erase the drive is this true?

A lot to answer and I can't right now do justice to it.

WD Black

If Windows shares a drive with other partitions or OS X then no, use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the partition. I use a dedicate Widnows drive and use Paragon Hard Disk Manager to clone windows. If the drive is just Windows then and you plan to reinstall, then just Windows installer to reformat or delete all the volumes. Otherwise it would be safe to Erase using DU, but if you used BCA and it has HFS volumes also, then no.

For TimeMachine I aim for 350% capacity of all the drives, volumes and data. For the system, I use Carbon Copy Cloner and have a couple of those.

Try repairing from Recovery Mode. Try using a drive with dedicated small system just for maintenance. You may have some files linked to the system.

You would need a Mac with native Thunderbolt like the 6,1 to use TB storage.

Your graphic card in slot #1 is designed to be double wide and not cover slot #2. There are only 4 PCIe slots.

Slots 3&4 are 4x but they are PCIe 1.1 and only a problem when considering some SSD type cards. 16x is nice for an Apple/Samsung NGFF or XP941. See this long long thread to delve into that topic - had to read twice and still missed some things

Visit the long thread on "All we know about USB3" - it is handy but not ideal candidate. eSATA is fine or internal. Having one card with both usually makes sense.

SATA III 7.2K drives are capable of 125-180MB/sec and an SSD would be capabable of 550MB/sec but only on a PCI-SSD card, otherwise on SATA II that the drive bays use just 250MB/sec. An eSATA card would be fine.

 

[Zobec]

Thanks IowaLynn, I really appreciate you having taking the time to reply. I will take a look at those threads you mentioned regarding SATA and USB3 this is interesting. I wonder is there differences in performance between how a esata/USB3 card or drive runs in a mac6.1 to a how a esata/USB3 card or drive runs in 5.1 or 4.1? Or is that what is covered in the threads

Regarding erasing the drive, thanks again I looked at bootcamp manager and it seems like that could restore the drive back to a single partition. That is my safety net. However I did not continue down that path as I first wanted to find out why the disk would not unmount, I wanted the disk to be able to unmount and repair it self in normal mode, this error unmount was very irritating. If I could not find why I was going to get rid of the partition.

So I tried booting in safe mode and I could verify the drive and also I could repair and unmount the drive in safe mode.

I done the same thing in recovery mode and I was able to verify and repair the disk and in this mode bootcamp is mounted.

In normal mode I ejected the bootcamp drive and still when I tried to repair the disk it could not finish the operation Error couldn't unmount disk I didn't know why I searched and found someone with the same problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4865361

I found that I needed to type in the terminal:

lsof /Volumes/"Volume name"

Volume name, is the name you named the hard drive.

I could see what was using the disk and there was a program working in the background, I disabled the program and I could then repair/mount the drive everything is back to normal it seems. I have been very fortunate and I have learned that the terminal offers more functions to help solve problems. I wish there was a list of most useful terminal functions or something to that effect. I don't if that would be any good, there are many different problems, many different hardware configurations but I guess not as many different OS's out there.

Again thank you to everyone you really helped I really didn't know what was going on.

I don't know after this maybe a fresh install is best. : )

 

[IowaLynn]

Thanks IowaLynn, I really appreciate you having taking the time to reply. I will take a look at those threads you mentioned regarding SATA and USB3 this is interesting. I wonder is there differences in performance between how a esata/USB3 card or drive runs in a mac6.1 to a how a esata/USB3 card or drive runs in 5.1 or 4.1? Or is that what is covered in the threads

A drive generally is limted by the controller and interface only when using SSDs.

All those interfaces offer more than enough bandwidth - 150MB/sec. So even SATA II internal drive bays and won't change when used external in USB2 or SATA III.

A 6,1 suffers from using a single channel for all USB3 so that it does limit the number of drives being used for high performance at one time.

As for external drive cases, I would venture to look around more on Amazon and Newegg and elsewhere as well for ideas.