I bought a Mac Mini server with two Hitachi 500gb sata drives. These drive were the original drives. The first drive, Mac HD, is the system drive and the second drive, Untitled, is a spare drive. After I turned on the server, I noticed the Untitled drive automatically unmounted and I decided to take the drive out and test it. I ran First Aid and FA could not repair the drive. Also, I ran Disk Warrior and DW could not repair the drive either.

Since FA and DW could not repair the drive, I guess this means the drive has some type of hardware failure. Is there any other tests that I could run just to be sure the drive is bad? I am sure that First Aid and Disk Warrior are correct. I am thinking the drive needs to be replaced. I don't know if I could erase the drive and perform a secure erase, maybe that would give more life to the drive. Perhaps, that will be a waste of time and the drive has some type of hardware defect.

Just to add, there is no clicking sounds or unual noises. The drive has power. Currently, I have it attached to my Mac and I am waiting for DU to display the drives. This is what makes me think there is something hardware related with the drive. The drive is not being mounted so I believe the drive is bad.

Ideally, you could connect the drive to a pc computer and run Hitachi´s WinDFT tool. That would allow testing of the disk, and also erasing it. Also, Mhdd or Victoria could do the test and erasing too.