I'm looking for some advise with some SAS drives I have purchased.
Background: I have been using UnRAID for about 18 months on consumer grade hardware. Currently working on my 3-2-1 backups which is the reason for these SAS drives - to act as cold offsite storage. I am potentially interested in using them for an array in future, especially once I get my solar set up and energy does not cost as much.
As it feels like I have read every forum thread on this issue, I am including lots of details for others in my position.
I purchased 5 x SEAGATE 4TB SAS drives (ST4000NM0023 SEAGATE DKS2E-H4R0SS with 7FA6 firmware, date 15227, DOM 11/2014) to act as cold storage for my main UnRAID server. Along with this I have a ICY BOX 4-bay SAS/SATA enclosure with a IBM H1110 + SFF8087 (Broadcom / LSI SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2) I purchased off eBay which has been flashed with 20.00.07.00 and is in IT mode (wonder if it's possible to not be in IT mode after firmware flashing? At this point I feel like I would be happy with single-disk RAID pool).
Admittedly this is all new to me, the drives were cheap so I figured I'd give it a go. I have this hardware installed in a spare Dell Optiplex 9020 workstation - hence the unlicensed UnRAID install.
Prior to doing all the research I have done, I thought I needed to be messing with some of the settings in the HBA card (e.g boot support - BIOS & OS, OS only, BIOS only, disabled etc). I now (think ?) I understand that the HBA card is providing direct access to the disks and this setting would not change anything.
When the disks were firstly installed to UnRAID I was getting errors as the drives had 520 byte sectors on them. I used `sg_format -v --format --size=512 /dev/sdX` which took ~16 hours or so. After this, I was still not able to see the drive in the drop-down in UnRAID.
I was also unsuccessful in initializing the drives in Windows.
I came across openSeaChest which I ran against 1 drive to reformat into 512 byte sectors. After this completed, I am now able to see the drive in the UnRAID GUI, however I get issues when attempting to format the device. The other drives have only been run through sg_format and do not show up in UnRAID GUI.
It feels like I have been through every permutation of PCIe slots for the HBA card, cables, re-format options, BIOS settings and drives and am still not able to format the drive so I can write data. I have not tried another machine however am happy to do so
Running smartctl I can see the device is now 512 byte sectors, SMART status is OK, drives are (a bit) old with ~7 years power on time etc.
Running gdisk I can see similar info from the drive, though looks like there are some errors
root@Tower2:~# gdisk /dev/sdc
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.8
Caution: invalid backup GPT header, but valid main header; regenerating
backup header from main header.
Warning! Main and backup partition tables differ! Use the 'c' and 'e' options
on the recovery & transformation menu to examine the two tables.
Warning! One or more CRCs don't match. You should repair the disk!
Main header: OK
Backup header: ERROR
Main partition table: OK
Backup partition table: ERROR
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: damaged
****************************************************************************
Caution: Found protective or hybrid MBR and corrupt GPT. Using GPT, but disk
verification and recovery are STRONGLY recommended.
****************************************************************************
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdc: 7814037168 sectors, 3.6 TiB
Model: DKS2E-H4R0SS
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): CBBB871C-C891-4CBF-BD23-0647EE876F75
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 7814037134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 7814037134 3.6 TiB 8300 Linux filesystem
Command (? for help):
Attempting to delete the partition and re-create in gdisk:
Command (? for help): d
Using 1
Command (? for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (34-7814037134, default = 2048) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (2048-7814037134, default = 7814037134) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Current type is 8300 (Linux filesystem)
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300):
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sdc.
The operation has completed successfully.
root@Tower2:~# gdisk /dev/sdc
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.8
Caution: invalid backup GPT header, but valid main header; regenerating
backup header from main header.
Warning! Main and backup partition tables differ! Use the 'c' and 'e' options
on the recovery & transformation menu to examine the two tables.
Warning! One or more CRCs don't match. You should repair the disk!
Main header: OK
Backup header: ERROR
Main partition table: OK
Backup partition table: ERROR
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: damaged
****************************************************************************
Caution: Found protective or hybrid MBR and corrupt GPT. Using GPT, but disk
verification and recovery are STRONGLY recommended.
****************************************************************************
Command (? for help):
Attempting to format the drive in UnRAID gives a bunch of `disk1 write error, sector=x` errors.
I found some other threads from people with the same drives however none of them solved my problems. Some people referred to seeing logs that the drive was locked however I do not see that, and the fact I am able to change sector size & write partition table leads me to believe it's not a write-protection issue (I also don't see anything obvious on the drive sticker as being an encryption key).
Been on this for about 5 days and I still don't feel all that close, any thoughts, ideas, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. SAS drives are new to me so I may be missing something obvious (like not knowing what IT mode was, the fact these drives had 520 byte sectors on them, etc!). Also combination of 3 new bits of hardware and lack of experience, I am not sure if I should be looking at faulty hardware or faulty operator (me!)
Diagnostics attached - thanks!
tower2-diagnostics-20230113-1530.zip