Hi, When I want to re-use a hard drive for a new purpose, I open Disk Utility and click the Partition tab. Then I choose how many partitions I want, their sizes, and their names. I don't know how I got into the habit of doing this next step, but next I click on the Erase tab and give the same disk name. Today I did this and had problems, even though it has always worked fine in the past. I am running 10.9.5 and the disks are inside a 2012 Mac Pro.
Typically in Disk Utility, each disk has a primary entry on the left of the main window, which gives the total size of the disk, the brand, and the model, such as "3 TB Seagate ST33000651AS". And then each partition has its own line, which shows the name of the partition. And lots of useful information is given at the bottom of the window. Earlier today, I re-created a single partition on a 3-TB drive and gave it the name "Disk_1". Then I erased the disk and gave it the same name (Disk_1). This is when the trouble started. At this point, both the main line and the indented line showed the same name (Disk_1), rather than the primary line showing something like "3 TB Seagate ST33000651AS". Also, when the primary line is selected, the bottom of the window shows 0 Bytes available and 3 TB used, even though that is not the case. If I click on the indented line, it says 2.99 TB available and 10 GB used, which sounds right. Also, when I click on the primary line, the Type is listed as Logical Volume Group rather than something like SATA Internal. I have tried to repair the disk, but this does not help. I don't see any errors, though the listing is longer than usual. When I select the primary line, I only get 2 tabs (First Aid and Partition) rather than the usual 5 tabs (First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID, Restore). And if I click on Partition, everything is greyed out -- I can't choose a new partition layout, or name, or size, nor can I click on the Options button or the Revert button. I do not think the disk itself is bad (or at least not before I started mucking with it), so I tried a second disk and had even worse results. I wondered if the name "Disk_1" was a bad choice, since perhaps it is reserved for use by the system (though if so, I would hope the system would warn me not to use that name). So I called this one HD_2. This time, when things looked to be going bad in the same way, I clicked on a Cancel button, hoping to prevent the same problem. But this must have made a worse mess. Now I only have a main entry, and again it says "HD_2" rather than something like "3 TB Seagate ST33000651AS". Also, it again says "Logical Volume Group" rather than SATA Internal. And there is no second, indented line! As before, there are only 2 tabs rather than 5. And if I click on the Partition tab, everything is greyed out, so I can't do anything. What have I done? Is there some way to fix my disks? I tried copying a large file to Disk_1 and it seemed to work. But something sure seems messed up. And I don't know how to rename or repartition these disks. I sure don't trust them in their current state. By the way, somewhere in this process I remember seeing a message about an encrypted disk, but I did not intentially do anything with encryption (now or ever). I don't know if that is related. Any help would be very much appreciated! Thanks in advance, Gregg _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list MacOSX-talk@omnigroup.com http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
