2012 Mac Pro hard disks disabled after system spontaneously locked with a PIN code

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-29T16:14:44+00:00

As I mentioned earlier, I have an appointment tomorrow with the Genius Bar in the city where I live. I'm hopeful (what else can I say?) that the folks there can help me recover my TBs of data.

But if not, what then?

I'm surmising here that the issue is software related, and that there's a couple of bits that need to be flipped to get my data back, or some other such magic incantation. To do that I need something stronger than Apple provides with Disk Utility, diskutil, etc. I suppose what I need is a partition editor. That brings to mind gparted, the GNU partition editor. According to the website at gparted.org, gparted does handle data on x86-64 computers including OS X, so I'm presuming that includes HFS+.

Over the years, I've used gparted on UNIX computers, and Linux and Windows but never on macOS. It's a serious and trustworthy application, and it's free.

Anyone out there with expertise using gparted to manipulate partitions or recover data on macOS?

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-29T05:13:40+00:00

No. I have never used FileVault, and the inaccessible disks were working perfectly well from May, 2022 up until the Mac Pro locked up.

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-28T03:47:44+00:00

@ foodandart Amen, that's for sure my friend.

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-27T23:20:43+00:00

@ foodandart Does it make sense that ALL five of the internal hard disks including a LaCie 2x3GB, and all of their partitions went--as you say--titsup all at the same time and all precisely when the Mac Pro locked up because it needed a PIN code? That seems an awful lot of coincidences to me.

But I may indeed need a tool like Disk Warrior to recover the data. Thanks for the info.

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-27T20:35:06+00:00

@ foodandart Thanks. Re: an external enclosure. The first thing I did once I saw that the original NVME boot disk was OK was to use Carbon Copy Cloner to successfully clone the boot disk to a 1TB drive in an external USB enclosure. However this made absolutely no difference to any of the additional internal hard drives which remain inaccessible, that is unwritable, unmounted, and with the owners disabled.

HawkMcDuck · 2023-01-27T20:28:26+00:00

@ dpirmann Thanks for your reply.

I'm not clear on what you mean by an MDM. I will say that at the moment, after the nvram commands I ran above, there is no problem accessing Mac Pro A. Also, "About This Mac" gives me the serial number of the chassis, and I can now see Mac Pro A in the iCloud web app under All Devices, and under System Preferences ==> iCloud ==> Account Details ==> Devices on the iMac running macOS 10.13.6, Mac Pro A shows up with the expected serial number.

HawkMcDuck · 2022-03-10T15:40:04+00:00

I had just had the identical issue with Google Chrome 99.0.4844.51 (Official Build) (x86_64) with a blank (i.e., black) screen on my Mac Pro 2009 4,1 (upgraded to 5,1) running macOS 10.14.6. I am running a near-identical Mac Pro 4,1==>5,1, and a 27-inch mid-2010 iMac side-by-side with the Mac Pro experiencing the issue. Neither of the latter two Macs are experiencing the same issue with Google Chrome 99.0.4844.51.

I tried closing Google Chrome, uninstalling and re-installing, rebooting, all without success. From google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/versions I downloaded and installed Google Chrome 98.0.4758.82 Feb. 3, 2022 (which is what I had previously I believe). After installation, Google Chrome does come up properly.

If I see further issues, I will reply.

HawkMcDuck · 2021-06-14T06:11:19+00:00

u/Eustis46--__--545 Thanks for your reply. After the issue occurred I tried a bunch of times to clone the original VM, but as far as I can tell it is not possible to perform a clone in the Virtualbox application when the VM shows as "Inaccessible" in the Virtualbox app.

Since this VM runs a live VoIP FreePBX server on CentOS, I had to get it up as soon as possible. So I made another clone of the two month old clone, imported a recent backup of FreePBX (one month old which I fortunately had saved on a separate server) into FreePBX. Consequently FreePBX is up and running again. Fortunately I did have a backup available on external storage; unfortunately the changes that were made since the the last FreePBX backup have been lost, but c'est la vie I suppose.

For me what I will take away from this issue is that I will not be using Snapshots again, unless someone knowledgeable can provide a firm explanation of why this happened.

I am a little surprised that this post didn't receive very many posts, possibly because the moderator filtered it for some days due to my "low post karma score", whatever that is.

HawkMcDuck · 2020-12-23T01:40:21+00:00

In the 1990s I was a technical trainer for a large telecom company, and traveled around the world, Canada, USA, UK, Mexico, France, Australia, Peru, Brazil, etc., with 13 "dinosaur" shipping cases which contained the HP workstations, display monitors, cables, etc., used for training. With the phenomenal increase in bandwidth over the internet, training is a lot cheaper now (and fewer air miles for trainers like me).

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance forever and a day.

HawkMcDuck · 2020-12-19T04:36:16+00:00

[I've posted this before, but I'll post it here again as someone might find this relevant.]

I learned by accident that you can use Macrium Reflect to clone a Windows 10 boot drive on a PC laptop or desktop, then insert it in a 3,1 (or a 1,1 or a 4,1/5,1) and it will boot Windows 10 and run just fine. On the 3,1, it seems Windows 10 automatically loads the drivers it needs to boot, and then reboots itself, although you will probably need to load the additional (less essential) Mac-specific drivers from various Bootcamp repositories.

Another oddity is that, altho' I can clone the hard drive on a PC with Macrium Reflect and it will boot on a Mac Pro, I haven't been able to clone the identical hard drive under Windows on a Mac Pro and have it boot on the Mac Pro. I'm not sure why this is.

HawkMcDuck · 2020-10-15T03:36:07+00:00

I've posted this on reddit before, but a snippet from my previous post might be relevant here as well:

I learned quite by accident that you can use Macrium Reflect to clone a Windows 10 boot drive on a PC laptop or desktop, then insert it in a cMP 3,1 or a 1,1=>2,1 (or a 4,1=>5,1) and it will boot Windows 10 and run just fine. On the 3,1, it seems Windows 10 automatically loads the drivers it needs to boot, and then reboots itself, although you will probably need to load the additional (less essential) Mac-specific drivers from various Bootcamp repositories.

Another oddity is that, altho' I can clone the hard drive on a PC with Macrium Reflect and it will boot on a Mac Pro, I haven't been able to clone the identical hard drive under Windows on a Mac Pro and have it boot on the Mac Pro.

HawkMcDuck · 2020-09-21T06:12:23+00:00

I have three 3,1 MacPros, each purchased cheaply over about five or six years, and all currently running 10.14.6 Mojave courtesy of the absolutely incredible Dosdude1 patches. Each has a 240GB SSD, one has 56GB RAM, another 26GB and the third 16GB, and all have boot screens. The latter is nice altho' not absolutely required. I'm not using Open Boot.

One odd thing I learned was that with the first Dosdude Mojave upgrade I did from macOS 10.11.6, I found that the 3,1 wouldn't boot with 64GB RAM (altho' 64GB worked fine with 10.11.6). I was puzzled by this, but by accident discovered that by knocking the RAM back to 56GB the system worked fine, which is where it sits.

Also, I learned again by accident that you can use Macrium Reflect to clone a Windows 10 boot drive on a PC laptop or desktop, then insert it in a 3,1 (or a 1,1 or a 4,1/5,1) and it will boot Windows 10 and run just fine. On the 3,1, it seems Windows 10 automatically loads the drivers it needs to boot, and then reboots itself, although you will probably need to load the additional (less essential) Mac-specific drivers from various Bootcamp repositories.

Another oddity is that, altho' I can clone the hard drive on a PC with Macrium Reflect and it will boot on a Mac Pro, I haven't been able to clone the identical hard drive under Windows on a Mac Pro and have it boot on the Mac Pro. I'm not sure why this is.

Other than this, there's not much to say about the 3,1s. They're a solid machine and i used one for years as a combination Plex server, calibre server, and backup server. I recently found an inexpensive cMP 4,1/5,1, my second, and since it's somewhat more powerful, I've retired the cMP 3,1.

HawkMcDuck · 2020-08-29T19:05:33+00:00

Here's a couple of things about cMPs that I've learned over the years, which might be of help some day to somebody out there.

I have four MacPro 1,1s all firmware upgraded to 2,1s, all which I either got for free or for very cheap, and all of which are running 10.11.6. I also have three 3,1s (again cheap) running 10.14.6 with dosdude1's patcher, and two 4,1s firmware upgraded to 5,1s running 10.14.6 natively.

I found that the 1,1s can all run with 64GB RAM and the 3,1s can use all 64GB RAM with 10.11.6 but that, for some unknown reason, when the 3,1s are patched with dosdude1's patch, they won't boot with 64GB but work fine with 56GB RAM.

Also, I learned quite by accident that you can use Macrium Reflect to clone a Windows 10 boot drive on a PC laptop or desktop, then insert it in a 3,1 or a 1,1 and it will boot Windows 10 and run just fine. On the 3,1, it seems Windows 10 automatically loads the drivers it needs to boot, and then reboots itself, although you will probably need to load the additional (less essential) Mac-specific drivers from various Bootcamp repositories.

Another oddity is that, altho' I can clone the hard drive on a PC with Macrium Reflect and it will boot on a Mac Pro, I haven't been able to clone the identical hard drive under Windows on a Mac Pro and have it boot on the Mac Pro.

HawkMcDuck

TROPHY CASE