Question Can't partition SAS drives

[Shmee]

Hmm, if you can't reinitialize, and the seller says it is a firmware issue, if you are unable to resolve the firmware issue you could return them. Maybe work with the seller and see if they can help you update the firmware, either by walking you through the steps or they could themselves.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Hmm, if you can't reinitialize, and the seller says it is a firmware issue, if you are unable to resolve the firmware issue you could return them. Maybe work with the seller and see if they can help you update the firmware, either by walking you through the steps or they could themselves.

As soon as I get off work I'll look at Seagate's website about updating the firmware.

 

[jamesdsimone]

When they complete that operation, try running sudo fdisk -l /dev/"drive" (lsdev to find the drives) to see what the physical sector size is. If the sector size is anything other than 512 or 4096 it won't work with standard operating systems. I bought some HP enterprise drives that were formatted to 520 byte physical sectors because whatever HP enterprise OS they were designed to work with had an extra 8 bytes of checksum data stored in the last 8 bytes; they wouldn't work until I did a mid level reformat to 512 byte physical sectors. If you do need to do that the linux utility sg3_utils will do it.

I downloaded a Seagate utility that says it is 520 byte despite the manual and another partitioning program reporting 512. I'll boot to Linux and run this utility and see if that works. I assume sudo sg3_utils at the command prompt will run it?

 

[jamesdsimone]

Found sg3_utils for linux but not sure how it works.

 

[Thazdude]

Found sg3_utils for linux but not sure how it works.

I can't really help you with the specifics tbh, I ran the same command 3 times for 3 14TB HPe SAS drives and I can't remember what the specific command was (well over a year ago). Did all 3 at the same time. There's plenty of resources on google as this is a fairly common issue nowadays with all these SAS server/netappliance drives hitting the market.

I will say my HBA was in IT (passthrough) mode; I wouldn't try this with the controller in any other mode but passthrough (IT) because these are raw SCSI commands being sent to the firmware. I used a https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/tips0831-serveraid-h1110 flashed to IT mode, which uses the SAS 2008 in tree kernel driver. Also keep in mind this is physically rewriting the sectors on the disk; it's the second lowest level information stored on the drive. The only thing lower is the data that the heads use to know their physical position on the platters and possibly the drives firmware in a non user accessible area (sometimes part of the firmware is stored on the platters to enable the use of a smaller flash chip). If you lose power when you're doing this there's a good chance the drives will be bricked. Make absolutely sure all power saving, sleep suspend etc. stuff is turned off as well in w/e OS you're using to do this. I used a UPS and it took about a day and a half for 14TB 7200RPM drives.

How to reformat 520 byte drives to 512 bytes (usually)

So a lot of cool hardware uses 520 byte sectors instead of 512 byte sectors (or 4* sector size in the case of SSDs). There is a lot of misinformation out there. Prettymuch anything since 2012 that supports 520 byte sectors will support 512 byte sectors if you know the right magic commands...

forum.level1techs.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1gj3nqf/reformatting_520_byte_sector_size_drives_to_512

How to reformat HDD & SSD to 512B Sector Size

For those of you who have purchased OEM rebranded HDD or SSD from major storage vendor such as NetApp, EMC, or even HP, you might find out that the drive that you've purchased will not initialized in windows. The main reason is that the drive come formatted from the factory with a non standard...

forums.servethehome.com

 

[jamesdsimone]

I got Sg3_utils for windows but sg_scan is not seeing the drives. It does not report my 2 SATA drives but for some reason it sees my 2 SATA DVD drives and my USD DVD drive. I'll have to read through these guides and see what they can do.

 

[Steltek]

Have you flashed an IT mode firmware to the onboard motherboard controller to convert it from a hardware RAID controller to an HBA controller?

If you have not, the onboard controller isn't going to let you do anything with the drives other than create/delete hardware RAID volumes.

I vaguely recall having to do this in the past with LSI standalone SAS RAID controller cards to convert them from RAID mode controllers to useable standalone HBA controllers. A lot of the used ones on eBay are advertised to come pre-flashed with the IT-mode firmware precisely for this reason.

EDIT: I missed @Thazdude 's post above which mentioned the IT mode related to the controller.

 

[jamesdsimone]

I saw that you need to switch it to IT mode but I haven't done that yet. As soon as I get some spare time I do that. I need to look through the BIOS configuration utility.

 

[jamesdsimone]

I'm worried about bricking the controller BIOS. Is that a potential problem? 4Tb SAS drives are less than 25USD so it isn't a big loss not using them.

 

[tcsenter]

I'll check the BIOS options. I think it is a Supermicro board.

I thought this was HP system? Check latest BIOS from HP.

 

[jamesdsimone]

I thought this was HP system? Check latest BIOS from HP.

It is. In order to access the IT mode for the LSI SAS controller you need to flash the controller BIOS.

 

[jamesdsimone]

It is. In order to access the IT mode for the LSI SAS controller you need to flash the controller BIOS. I have to latest BIOS for the computer installed.

 

[Shmee]

I'm worried about bricking the controller BIOS. Is that a potential problem? 4Tb SAS drives are less than 25USD so it isn't a big loss not using them.

If you try to use other SAS drives, isn't there a possibility that you would have the same issue outside of the controllers IT mode? Also, if you can't get the drives to work as advertised, you should probably return them to the seller. Get your money back.

Back to the controller, it sounds like it is a separate chip that needs to be flashed on the HP motherboard? Regardless, I don't think it would be any more risky than flashing the board's main BIOS itself. Not saying there isn't a chance of failure, but that goes for any update, and is generally pretty safe these days.

 

[jamesdsimone]

If you try to use other SAS drives, isn't there a possibility that you would have the same issue outside of the controllers IT mode? Also, if you can't get the drives to work as advertised, you should probably return them to the seller. Get your money back.

Back to the controller, it sounds like it is a separate chip that needs to be flashed on the HP motherboard? Regardless, I don't think it would be any more risky than flashing the board's main BIOS itself. Not saying there isn't a chance of failure, but that goes for any update, and is generally pretty safe these days.

Yes from everything I have read it is a separate BIOS on the controller chip. I have some Hitachi SAS drives that work great so I'm pretty sure it is the 520 sector size on the Seagate drives.

 

[tcsenter]

Some boards with third party controllers don't integrate the option ROM into the system BIOS, you can use the firmware utility provided by the controller manufacturer to update (or modify) the firmware of the controller chip just as though it were an add-in board or card. e.g. Some implementations of onboard NEC (Renesas) USB 3.0 controller chips, you could update the firmware separately from the main BIOS using the tools and firmware bin straight from NEC

 

[Steltek]

Some boards with third party controllers don't integrate the option ROM into the system BIOS, you can use the firmware utility provided by the controller manufacturer to update (or modify) the firmware of the controller chip just as though it were an add-in board or card. e.g. Some implementations of onboard NEC (Renesas) USB 3.0 controller chips, you could update the firmware separately from the main BIOS using the tools and firmware bin straight from NEC

The integrated RAID controller on the Z840/820 should be a Broadcom/LSI 2308 SAS2 controller with a separate BIOS and which uses standard Broadcom/LSI firmwares. It requires drives be formatted to the standard 512 byte sector size.

If the Seagate drives are formatted to 520 byte sectors, the problem in this case preventing the change in format is that the onboard 2308 controller is not in IT mode. I haven't messed with one in over 10 years, but I'm fairly certain I remember the controller must be in IT mode in order to be able to reformat the drives with sg_format to use standard 512 byte sectors. The reformat won't work on a RAID-mode controller.

@jamesdsimone , if you don't want to flash the onboard controller to IT mode right now, the next best solution would likely be to purchase a cheapo used LSI SAS 9207-8i controller card (one already flashed to IT mode for Unraid/Truenas use) on eBay. Install it, connect the Seagate drives to it, and use sg_format under Linux it to reformat the sector size of each of the drives to 512 bytes. They should then work with your onboard RAID controller.

You can get them for like $30 or less (without cables, if you look around) as most Unraid/Truenas users have ditched them from their setups for faster SAS3 controllers to take advantage of SAS3 drives.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Some boards with third party controllers don't integrate the option ROM into the system BIOS, you can use the firmware utility provided by the controller manufacturer to update (or modify) the firmware of the controller chip just as though it were an add-in board or card. e.g. Some implementations of onboard NEC (Renesas) USB 3.0 controller chips, you could update the firmware separately from the main BIOS using the tools and firmware bin straight from NEC

I downloaded the utility and the IT BIOS. The tutorial posted earlier uses a FreeDOS boot USB drive. The installation documention for FreeDOS is none existent so have to figure that out. The setup.bat on the iso won't run on a 64bit OS. At this point it's getting the time to figure everything out and do it. I assume I can leave the BIOS in IT mode since I won't be using RAID.

 

[Steltek]

I downloaded the utility and the IT BIOS. The tutorial posted earlier uses a FreeDOS boot USB drive. The installation documention for FreeDOS is none existent so have to figure that out. The setup.bat on the iso won't run on a 64bit OS. At this point it's getting the time to figure everything out and do it. I assume I can leave the BIOS in IT mode since I won't be using RAID.

Putting it into IT mode is essentially converting the RAID controller into a plain-jane HBA SAS2 disk controller. Leaving it that way is actually more flexible to you, as it allows you to use the drives connected to it independently instead of utilizing a hardware RAID pool.

Loosing hardware RAID isn't a big loss, as having the controller in IT mode will allow you to use far more flexible software RAID like Unraid or Truenas if you ever want or need a RAID array.

You can always re-flash the controller back to RAID mode in the future if you want the hardware RAID functionality back, as long as you have the firmware. It ought to be included in the package you downloaded.

BTW, there is one thing that is very important to do before flashing the firmware.

The act of flashing to IT mode almost always erases the SAS address from the onboard LSI controller firmware. If the SAS address is not printed on the system motherboard (it is a long number that always begins with 500), make absolutely sure you do a query beforehand using the flash utility and either write it down somewhere or save it to a text file. Erasing the SAS address will render the controller non-functional until you write the SAS address back into the firmware with the flash utility. This would normally be your last step after flashing it to IT mode.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Well played around with sas2flash and it tells me I don't have an LSI SAS controller. Which is funny since everything else tells me I do.

 

[Micrornd]

Probably a dumb question at this point, but are you using SAS or SATA cables to connect the MB to the drives?

 

[jamesdsimone]

Probably a dumb question at this point, but are you using SAS or SATA cables to connect the MB to the drives?

Yes, the z840 has 4 hard drive bays which are factory connected to the SAS ports with cables that support both SATA and SAS drives. I have 2 512 SATA SSD's in bays 1 and 2 which are Win7 and Linux Mint boot drives. There are SATA only ports which are currently connected to DVD drives. I have connected Hitachi and Toshiba SAS drives in bays 3 and 4 and both work fine connected to the dual SATA/SAS ports.