The Request Could Not be Completed Because of an I/O Device Error

[Fritz]

Just received 2 SAS HD's from eBay and neither will initialize, I get the above error. Drives were sold as and labeled as Seagate Constellation ST33000650SS but Windows and HD Sentinel reports them as SEAGATE DKS2D-H3R0SS. HD Sentinel reports no problems with the drives.

Anybody know what might be going on here?

TIA

 

[nthu9280]

Seagate!

I don't think these have "power disable feature" but I'd check the specs to make sure and rule that out first.

 

[Fritz]

I tried them in a box that powers them via Molex and still no joy so that's not it.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

I see it's mentioned a couple of times on the Netapp forum, could it be formatted with 520B sectors?

 

[pricklypunter]

What does Seagate's own tools report it as? Depending on where the disk came from, it may have a tweaked firmware on it, or the block size might be something other than 512

 

[Fritz]

Ah, would a different block size cause this problem?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

I don't have any direct experience with windows and 520B discs, but they would certainly cause windows to crap out when trying to partition it. Probably worth firing it up under linux and giving it a poke with sg_scan.

 

[Fritz]

Yea, I've been reading up on it and it will cause this problem. Now I have to figure out where to get Smartmon from and how to use it. Anybody have any tips for a dummy?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

A bootable linux live ISO (I'm used to SystemRescueCD since it includes a lot of formatting/data recovery utils not always available in bog-standard bootable distros, but there are many to choose from) should give you access to all the tools you need, I assume you want smartctl (I assume you mean smartmontools which includes smartctl and smartd?) for checking the sector size?

 

[Fritz]

Thank you sir.

 

[pricklypunter]

I usually prefer and use Linux for this sort of thing. But as I remember, there was a port of sg3_utils for windows available on the git somewhere, if you are more comfortable working in windows

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Didn't know there was a win32 build - found them in the downloads listing here:
Index of /sg/p

Specifically, the more recent versions appear to be these:
http://sg.danny.cz/sg/p/sg3_utils-1.44mgw64.zip
http://sg.danny.cz/sg/p/sg3_utils-1.43mgw64.zip

 

[Fritz]

I contacted the seller earlier and just got a response -

It sounds like you could be running into a firmware compatibility issue. Please go ahead and request a return and once we'll send you a return label and refund you once we get them back. We apologize for the inconvenience.

They are boxed up and ready to go. I really shouldn't have to deal with this. Sounds like the seller knew about the "Firmware compatibility issue" before he sent them out.

O well, there's no shortage of HD's on eBay and elsewhere.

Thanks all.

 

[pricklypunter]

I think that's a good call, particularly if the seller was aware that there may be firmware/ compatibility issues and not pointing that out to folks before the sale is done. At least the seller is standing behind his return policy, so kudos to them for that.

Dunno what your budget is for storage, and I know I probably sound like a shill here (I'm not btw), but if you are needing disks, why not give @TekramCalvin a PM and see if he can fix you up with something that's within your budget? I got some really nice HGST disks from him recently and have nothing but good things to say about them

 

[frogtech]

Just received 2 SAS HD's from eBay and neither will initialize, I get the above error. Drives were sold as and labeled as Seagate Constellation ST33000650SS but Windows and HD Sentinel reports them as SEAGATE DKS2D-H3R0SS. HD Sentinel reports no problems with the drives.

Anybody know what might be going on here?

TIA

DKS2D-H3R0SS

This part number is found on disks that are used in NetApp enclosures. The drive looks completely normal I'm guessing.

You need to format them back to 512 byte format. It's annoying because there's tons of disks on ebay that are like that and the sellers have zero clue and just sell them as is.

Just download sg_utils for Windows, open a cmd prompt window there and run the command

sg_scan.exe to get device PD#s

then

sg_format.exe --format --size=512 --six -v PD#

replace the # with the number of the drive

this will probably take a couple of hours. you can do more than one drive simultaneously if you open multiple cmd windows

 

[TekramCalvin]

I think that's a good call, particularly if the seller was aware that there may be firmware/ compatibility issues and not pointing that out to folks before the sale is done. At least the seller is standing behind his return policy, so kudos to them for that.

Dunno what your budget is for storage, and I know I probably sound like a shill here (I'm not btw), but if you are needing disks, why not give @TekramCalvin a PM and see if he can fix you up with something that's within your budget? I got some really nice HGST disks from him recently and have nothing but good things to say about them

I got a heart attack from the notification of the title. I thought Punter had an issue and maybe I missed an email and practically shat myself.

 

[pricklypunter]

I got a heart attack from the notification of the title. I thought Punter had an issue and maybe I missed an email and practically shat myself.

No, no, all is well with my disks, they are humming along nicely, I couldn't be happier with them bud

 

[T_Minus]

DKS2D-H3R0SS

This part number is found on disks that are used in NetApp enclosures. The drive looks completely normal I'm guessing.

You need to format them back to 512 byte format. It's annoying because there's tons of disks on ebay that are like that and the sellers have zero clue and just sell them as is.

Just download sg_utils for Windows, open a cmd prompt window there and run the command

sg_scan.exe to get device PD#s

then

sg_format.exe --format --size=512 --six -v PD#

replace the # with the number of the drive

this will probably take a couple of hours. you can do more than one drive simultaneously if you open multiple cmd windows

This.

@Fritz - You didn't even run SG Tool to see info, you just gave up. Disappointing, especially after others here told you what to do.

 

[Fritz]

I contacted the seller and he said to send them back and I did. He refunded me promptly after receiving them back. But I did note SG Tool for future reference.

 

[Runkster]

I recently bought a Seagate Constellation ES ST32000444SS and was surprised when it would not work with the Dell PERC H310 I had. I was able to get them to work together using the following method.

Using the Dell PERC H310 P20 firmware the drive was shown as blocked by the card since it did not have the Dell certified firmware on the drive even though it was the exact same model.
The SAS card was flashed using the following:
PERC H310 was flashed to LSI-9211-8i P7 IT mode firmware
card was then flashed to LSI-9211-8i P16 IT mode firmware (not sure if this step was necessary)
card was then flashed to LSI-9211-8i P20 (Avago) IT mode firmware and BIOS (to bring it to the current/latest firmware/BIOS)

The drive was then recognized by the card and would appear in the drive manager within windows
The drive could not be initialized or formatted at this point within windows (likely due to 520k block size)
I tried using the drive format utility built into the LSI card firmware/BIOS but the same issue was seen afterwards (took 4-5 hours)
I was able to use sg_tools and run the commands as suggested (took 4-5 hours) to convert the block size to 512k
sg_scan (to get the PD number - mine was PD0)
sg_format --format --size=512 --six -v PD# (replaceing PD# with PD0)

After this completed the drive looked normal within windows but would still not initialize
The drive was set to offline, then set back to online (within the windows drive manager)
I was then able to format the drive using GPT/NTFS (full format took about 4-5 hours)

Now the drive is up and running.

I found an article how to modify the firmware using a hex editor to make it flashable with the dell firmware utility and make it usable with the DELL PERC H310 card firmware. I'm tempted to buy another one just to try it out.

Thought this may help others trying to accomplish the same feat. Thanks for the info you guys, that was the final piece to the puzzle.

This.

@Fritz - You didn't even run SG Tool to see info, you just gave up. Disappointing, especially after others here told you what to do.