Finally got the mac mini M2 Pro to recognize the Thunderbolt 2 LaCie Big 5! Have been talking to/chatting with/emailing/visiting with customer support with LaCie and Apple all week. Even spent a long time at the Apple store. Apple was helpful but it determined that LaCie and G Speed raided drives needed to update their drivers to be recognized on the Apple silicon chip.
After researching tech support forums all over the internet, we came up with this combination of steps:
- Deleted unsigned kernel extensions (Acronis Backup in my case)
- Lowered boot security
- Installed the LaCie toolkit
- Installed the newest LaCie raid manager
This allowed the Mac Mini M2 to recognize the Lacie Big 5. We used the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter ($49) to connect the Thunderbolt cable to the Mac Mini.
Before getting the Mac Mini M2 to recognize the LaCie, I was able to make the Mac recognize a G-Speed raid 5 drive by installing the following Pegasus driver: https://www.promise.com/us/Support/DownloadCenter/Pegasus/Pegasus32/R4
After a restart, MAGIC! Both raided drives are recognized now. No one at Apple or LaCie or Western Digital/G-Speed seem to know these tricks.
Don't know if the Pegasus driver impacts the LaCie at all but it worked like a charm for the G-Speed external drive.
Am so relieved I can access all my files on both drives now.