Changing block size IBM branded Micron S650DC-800 SSD

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Brick

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Apr 19, 2019
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They made it pretty clear it could not be changed to 512 so I'll hang on to it. It will keep my papers from blowing away on a windy day.
 
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Benfish

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Jul 15, 2014
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They made it pretty clear it could not be changed to 512 so I'll hang on to it. It will keep my papers from blowing away on a windy day.
Do you still have it sitting around?

I am not sure by any means that it will work in your case but i use a lot of disks from DS8K's and in order to be able to change the sector size to 512b from 528b the only method i have found that works is a utility called setblocksize.


SG_format alone gives me errors and zeroing the disk at it current sector size (which is also recommended on other forums) before changing the sector size has also not worked.


If the utility itself does not work maybe it can at least point you in the right direction.
 

Arvind

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Jan 27, 2018
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I feel your pain; I'm currently messing with 6 IBM branded seagate ST4000NM0043. Hoping it's possible to put them back to OEM.
@kdub - can you clarify what block size the IBM branded ST4000NM0043 you referred to, were? What IBM part number were they?
 

Angst2k2k

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Dec 13, 2020
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Hi, did you guys ever figure out how to do this? I am afraid I'm a little naive and purchased 10 sas drives that I am assuming has a non standard sector size. They have an IBM label attached but I think they are hitachi 600gb drives and show up as IBM-SSG in the megaraid firmware. I have tried the methods in lsi module in ubuntu but the drives do not even show up in lsscsi, my next step was going to be searching for the firmware. Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance -Steve
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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Hi, did you guys ever figure out how to do this? I am afraid I'm a little naive and purchased 10 sas drives that I am assuming has a non standard sector size. They have an IBM label attached but I think they are hitachi 600gb drives and show up as IBM-SSG in the megaraid firmware. I have tried the methods in lsi module in ubuntu but the drives do not even show up in lsscsi, my next step was going to be searching for the firmware. Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance -Steve
Hello, Steve. What exact model number is written on the label? It's important if you are looking for a firmware. You have megaraid card, meaning you can fetch some more info about the drive in storcli - command syntax is about this: storcli /cx/ex/sx show all, where x is specific to your setup. Post the output here and we'll try to figure out what can be done next.
 

Angst2k2k

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Dec 13, 2020
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Thanks very much for your reply! The drive model is HUC109060CSS601, but has an IBM Storage label on it FRU: 45W7734

I have been using megacli to no avail, I believe the -pdlist command is what you were looking for the output is below. It is the drive in slot 1 obviously, and as you can see is 528 size all the rest of the drives give the same output so I left them detached. I've tried everything I can think of with megacli if storcli will do it then by all means I'll give it a shot I'm at my wits end ha. Thanks again -Steve

Adapter #0

Enclosure Device ID: N/A
Slot Number: 0
Drive's position: DiskGroup: 0, Span: 0, Arm: 0
Enclosure position: N/A
Device Id: 25
WWN: 5000C50076D95C30
Sequence Number: 2
Media Error Count: 0
Other Error Count: 0
Predictive Failure Count: 0
Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0
PD Type: SAS

Raw Size: 136.732 GB [0x11177328 Sectors]
Non Coerced Size: 136.232 GB [0x11077328 Sectors]
Coerced Size: 136.218 GB [0x11070000 Sectors]
Sector Size: 512
Firmware state: Online, Spun Up
Device Firmware Level: YS0A
Shield Counter: 0
Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A
SAS Address(0): 0x5000c50076d95c31
SAS Address(1): 0x0
Connected Port Number: 0(path0)
Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST9146853SS YS0A6XM40PWS
FDE Capable: Not Capable
FDE Enable: Disable
Secured: Unsecured
Locked: Unlocked
Needs EKM Attention: No
Foreign State: None
Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Media Type: Hard Disk Device
Drive: Not Certified
Drive Temperature :33C (91.40 F)
PI Eligibility: No
Drive is formatted for PI information: No
PI: No PI
Port-0 :
Port status: Active
Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s
Port-1 :
Port status: Active
Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s
Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No



Enclosure Device ID: N/A
Slot Number: 1
Enclosure position: N/A
Device Id: 17
WWN: 5000CCA056583DDB
Sequence Number: 1
Media Error Count: 0
Other Error Count: 0
Predictive Failure Count: 0
Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0
PD Type: SAS

Raw Size: 0 KB [0x4280fcb4 Sectors]
Non Coerced Size: 0 KB [0x4270fcb4 Sectors]
Coerced Size: 0 KB [0x42700000 Sectors]
Sector Size: 528
Firmware state: Unconfigured(good), Spun Up
Device Firmware Level: E770
Shield Counter: 0
Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A
SAS Address(0): 0x5000cca056583dd9
SAS Address(1): 0x0
Connected Port Number: 0(path0)
Inquiry Data: IBM-SSG H0VH600 E770KWHKJE3RE770
FDE Capable: Capable
FDE Enable: Disable
Secured: Unsecured
Locked: Unlocked
Needs EKM Attention: No
Foreign State: None
Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Media Type: Hard Disk Device
Drive: Not Supported
Drive Temperature : N/A
PI Eligibility: No
Drive is formatted for PI information: No
PI: No PI
Port-0 :
Port status: Active
Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s
Port-1 :
Port status: Active
Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s
Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No




Exit Code: 0x00
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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FDE Capable: Capable
FDE Enable: Disable
Secured: Unsecured
Locked: Unlocked
Needs EKM Attention: No
Foreign State: None
Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s
Media Type: Hard Disk Device
Drive: Not Supported
Good, drive is unsecured and unlocked. The only problem is that your RAID controller doesn't support 528 bps drives and you need an HBA to reformat this drive. Cheapest HBA I can imagine is something like LSI9211 or 9212 with IT firmware.


The drive model is HUC109060CSS601, but has an IBM Storage label
Your drive has IBM version of firmware and the most fresh IBM firmware for this drive I could find is JNEA8
Try to update but again you need HBA first
 

Angst2k2k

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Dec 13, 2020
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Thanks, I'll give that a shot I found one for $50 that won't break the bank. I have some old Dell hbas but they have the 1068 chip which I already tried and doesn't have IT mode. It pretended to do a low level format but still didn't work ha. I'll keep you posted, will then the sg3 utils work or will I have to do it through the bios? Thanks again & have a good one -Steve
 

Angst2k2k

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Dec 13, 2020
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Just to give you an update, this has just been a comedy of errors got the card and never could access the bios on the new board. It was a dell perc h310 btw, just as I was about to start a return I hit the forums and come to find out this was only flashed to it mode and the bios firmware was not there I assume to speed up the boot process? Although how am I supposed to tell it which drive to boot from? Smh.... so found the rom and reflashed the card got in the bios and told it to boot to my centos drive. It never would boot, kept stalling at "a start job is running for dev-mapper-ol x2droot.device" so frig, booted it to rescue mode I figured it couldn't find a driver for the hba did a yum install update, nothing to do....... so then I decided what the hell, can I use the sg_format in rescue mode and turns out that I can! So it is formatting the drive at 512 bytes as I am typing this, thanks for all the advice hope this helps somebody and have a great Christmas! -Steve
 
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sephallen

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Jan 22, 2021
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I recently bought the exact same model IBM SAS SSD (even down to the firmware version) that @Brick purchased last year. However, unlike that auction, the seller here in UK did not state that the drive sector size could be changed. If only I had given it a quick Google and stumbled across this forum before!

I re-tried basically everything that has been tried on this thread so far, plus a couple of extra things. Before getting anyone's hopes up, I was not able to change the sector size either, I'll just post my findings here in case it helps someone else.

As for the drive, I think I will re-sell it on eBay, but clearly stating the sector size limitation!

Firstly, from @Benfish suggestion (when you compile setblocksize, the default value is 512, so no need to pass a value here):

Bash:
setblocksize V0.2

Checking parameters ...
   Done.
New blocksize: 512 Bytes
Format timeout: 800 minutes
Open device file ...
   Done.
Prepare command ...
   Done.
Send INQUIRY command ...
   Write error

Next, @kdub original post suggested that this drive may be the same as a Seagate 1200.2. Seeing that @Brick attempted to flash a Micron firmware before, I thought it give it a go with the Seagate firmware. In order to even download the firmware, you need a valid serial, which is just a simple Google images search away! The Seagate firmware comes in three flavours:


Code:
STD - Standard (also known as Secure Download & Diagnostic (SD&D))
SED - Self Encrypting Drive
FIPS - Federal Information Processing Standard
Out of the sake of completion, I did try all three, but they all give the same result:

Bash:
==========================================================================================
 SeaChest_Firmware - Seagate drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
 Copyright (c) 2014-2019 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
 SeaChest_Firmware Version: 2.7.0-1_19_23 X86_64
 Build Date: Jun 10 2019
 Today: Fri Jan 22 22:01:14 2021
==========================================================================================

/dev/sg19 - IBM-SSGMSVW800 - ZAZ15ZSP0000822150Z3 - SCSI
.
Firmware Download failed

After some trawling through the IBM Knowledge Center, and somewhat alluded to by @zack$, it does appear that an IBM pdisk (block size 528) can be converted to a hdisk (512) when it is no longer in the array via IBM's SAS Disk Array Manager.
Unfortunately, I do not own or have access to such hardware in order to try.
However, after more digging, it also seems that IBM's SMIT CLI tool is also capable of converting pdisks to hdisks.
Of course, there is a large caveat, SMIT runs on IBM's operating system named AIX, which only runs on Power PC architecture.
There are guides online to show how to emulate PPC with QEMU and run AIX, but to get native access to the drive, I believe you would need to pass through an entire drive controller which has the SSD attached. Sadly, I do not have the hardware requirements for this either so I am unable to test.

I think this is where I reach the end of the road. Thank you to everyone in this thread who came up with different suggestions, I'm glad I stumbled across this forum in the search for a bargain SAS SSD.
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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I re-tried basically everything that has been tried on this thread so far, plus a couple of extra things. Before getting anyone's hopes up, I was not able to change the sector size either
Hi there, it looks to me that your drive is simply in locked state. Someone who sold it to you wiped clean the content of the VD but didn't remove secured VD from the array of security capable (and active) PDs. Behavior of a drive in the locked state is well documented for instance in HGST manuals, so it will not react on your attempts to format unit, read or write to unit even if the drive has the supported sector size. Most likely drive will ignore write buffer (firmware download) command - depends on DL port lock state. Some HBAs will not detect such a drive at all, RAID controllers that doesn't support security feature will mark a locked drive as 'unconfigured bad' and you will not be able to do anything about it unless you change the controller itself. Setlocksize and sedutil will not help you in this case.
 

sephallen

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Jan 22, 2021
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Hi there, it looks to me that your drive is simply in locked state. Someone who sold it to you wiped clean the content of the VD but didn't remove secured VD from the array of security capable (and active) PDs. Behavior of a drive in the locked state is well documented for instance in HGST manuals, so it will not react on your attempts to format unit, read or write to unit even if the drive has the supported sector size. Most likely drive will ignore write buffer (firmware download) command - depends on DL port lock state. Some HBAs will not detect such a drive at all, RAID controllers that doesn't support security feature will mark a locked drive as 'unconfigured bad' and you will not be able to do anything about it unless you change the controller itself. Setlocksize and sedutil will not help you in this case.
Thanks for the heads up! I have contacted the seller to see if he is able to assist me.
My HBA (LSI SAS2008) does appear to detect the drive.
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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My HBA (LSI SAS2008) does appear to detect the drive.
Yep, SAS2008 detects locked drives, but I didn't succeed in finding any software tool even to see that drive is locked. Maybe SeaChest_Security with
--showLockedRegions key will do the trick, I don't have any locked drive at hand. What you need straight off is to 'secure erase' the drive. Unfortunately each and every soft tool devoted to do this task with SED drives failed for me with HBA. The 'security capable' RAID controller did the trick though.
 

sephallen

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Jan 22, 2021
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Yep, SAS2008 detects locked drives, but I didn't succeed in finding any software tool even to see that drive is locked. Maybe SeaChest_Security with
--showLockedRegions key will do the trick, I don't have any locked drive at hand. What you need straight off is to 'secure erase' the drive. Unfortunately each and every soft tool devoted to do this task with SED drives failed for me with HBA. The 'security capable' RAID controller did the trick though.
Here is the output:

Bash:
==========================================================================================
 SeaChest_Security - Seagate drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
 Copyright (c) 2014-2019 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
 SeaChest_Security Version: 2.0.1-1_19_23 X86_64
 Build Date: Jun 10 2019
 Today: Sat Jan 23 14:16:46 2021
==========================================================================================

/dev/sg19 - IBM-SSGMSVW800 - [SERIAL - I ASSUMED I SHOULD REMOVE IT] - SCSI
TCG Drive Locking Regions:
==========================
Name                   Common Name                         Range Start             Range Length            Read Status       Write Status    LockOnReset
Global_Range           Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band1                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band2                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band3                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band4                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band5                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band6                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band7                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band8                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band9                  Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band10                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band11                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band12                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band13                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band14                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle
Band15                 Locking                             N/A                     N/A                     Disabled          Disabled      PowerCycle

NOTE1: The Global Range encompases all LBAs not already assigned to a range or band.
NOTE2: All supported ranges or bands are shown.
       Not all bands will be used.
       Consult your security software to configure the different ranges or bands.
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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Here is how unlocked drive looks like:
Code:
TCG Drive Locking Regions:
==========================
Name                    Common Name                             Range Start             Range Length            Read Status     Write Status    LockOnReset
Global_Range            Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        N/A
Band1                   Locking                                 0                       3750748848              Disabled        Disabled        N/A
Band2                   Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        PowerCycle
Band3                   Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        PowerCycle

NOTE1: The Global Range encompases all LBAs not already assigned to a range or band.
NOTE2: All supported ranges or bands are shown.
       Not all bands will be used.
       Consult your security software to configure the different ranges or bands.

And as long as we know that "An LBA Range is considered to be unlocked by default if its ReadLockEnabled is FALSE and LockOnReset is empty" what you need first is to get rid of TCG security lock. There may be a software solution: Seachest is compatible with Seagates only, Micron Storage Executive Software claims it can do a psid revert for S650DC. If for whatever reason it fails (Micron considers an ssd loaded with IBM firmware as non-Micron ssd for example), you can use any RAID controller that works with SED drives. List of compatible LSI controllers can be found here, and if corresponding software option is present, TCG can be locked/unlocked in MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM). Potentially even cheaper option is Dell PERC controllers off ebay with security feature present in H7x0 or H8x0 series - they initially can do secure erase and unlock such a drive.
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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Next, @kdub original post suggested that this drive may be the same as a Seagate 1200.2. Seeing that @Brick attempted to flash a Micron firmware before, I thought it give it a go with the Seagate firmware.
Maybe this attempt failed because Seachest refuses to work with non-Seagate drives. I have a little bit better idea, you can test it and if the FW Download Port is not locked out it could work. Grab an attached original S650DC firmware for this specific drive model and try to burn it using sg_write_buffer command. Take into account that only Modes 4, 5, and 7 are supported for this ssd which corresponds to -m dmc, -m dmc_save and -m dmc_offs_save arguments. I would choose second one to begin with)
 

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sephallen

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Jan 22, 2021
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Here is how unlocked drive looks like:
Code:
TCG Drive Locking Regions:
==========================
Name                    Common Name                             Range Start             Range Length            Read Status     Write Status    LockOnReset
Global_Range            Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        N/A
Band1                   Locking                                 0                       3750748848              Disabled        Disabled        N/A
Band2                   Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        PowerCycle
Band3                   Locking                                 N/A                     N/A                     Disabled        Disabled        PowerCycle

NOTE1: The Global Range encompases all LBAs not already assigned to a range or band.
NOTE2: All supported ranges or bands are shown.
       Not all bands will be used.
       Consult your security software to configure the different ranges or bands.

And as long as we know that "An LBA Range is considered to be unlocked by default if its ReadLockEnabled is FALSE and LockOnReset is empty" what you need first is to get rid of TCG security lock. There may be a software solution: Seachest is compatible with Seagates only, Micron Storage Executive Software claims it can do a psid revert for S650DC. If for whatever reason it fails (Micron considers an ssd loaded with IBM firmware as non-Micron ssd for example), you can use any RAID controller that works with SED drives. List of compatible LSI controllers can be found here, and if corresponding software option is present, TCG can be locked/unlocked in MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM). Potentially even cheaper option is Dell PERC controllers off ebay with security feature present in H7x0 or H8x0 series - they initially can do secure erase and unlock such a drive.
The Dell PERC controller prices aren't too bad, so I will consider picking one up if the firmware you provided is not workable.

Speaking of which,

Maybe this attempt failed because Seachest refuses to work with non-Seagate drives. I have a little bit better idea, you can test it and if the FW Download Port is not locked out it could work. Grab an attached original S650DC firmware for this specific drive model and try to burn it using sg_write_buffer command. Take into account that only Modes 4, 5, and 7 are supported for this ssd which corresponds to -m dmc, -m dmc_save and -m dmc_offs_save arguments. I would choose second one to begin with)
Here are my findings:

Bash:
Write buffer: pass-through os error: Invalid argument
Write buffer failed: Invalid argument
sg_write_buffer failed: Invalid argument

Bash:
Write buffer: pass-through os error: Invalid argument
Write buffer failed: Invalid argument
sg_write_buffer failed: Invalid argument

Bash:
Write buffer: pass-through os error: Invalid argument
Write buffer failed: Data protect
sg_write_buffer failed: Data protect

Defining a chunk size, for example sg_write_buffer -b 4k -I S650DC-FIPS_MB19.bin -m 5 /dev/sdt does remove the Write buffer: pass-through os error: Invalid argument, but the other two messages remain the same.
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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sg_write_buffer failed: Invalid argument
that's odd, maybe options have to come in different order: -m first, and -I after it.
sg_write_buffer failed: Data protect
firmware download port seems to be locked by encryption unfortunately:

data_protect.PNG

That is strange too, because from this post on the first page comes that it has to be open:

port.PNG

The Dell PERC controller prices aren't too bad, so I will consider picking one up if the firmware you provided is not workable.
H700 is the cheapest and widely available option
 

Whaaat

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Jan 31, 2020
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What are your confidence levels like with using this controller? What would be involved exactly?
As I've written above all you need to do is to get rid of the security config from previous array this drive was pulled from. All FIPS 140-2 compliant drives behave similarly because their behavior is strictly defined by the definitions of this standard. You can read what your specific drive will or will not do once security auto-lock is triggered following the removal from the secured array. Should we had a software tool that erases security config we wouldn't be looking for any additional controller. Similar to you I spent some time looking for a free tool able to perform single operation - secure erase of my TCG Enterprise SED locked HGST drive attached to an HBA, but every tool claimed to be able of doing so failed in a different way. Eventually I gave up and bought H700 for $12 as it is the first security capable controller from Dell, but being very old means it is also dirt cheap and wide-spread.
security.jpg

If you are not going to import foreign config left on the drive (you are unable to do this without a key anyway), the only available non greyed-out option for a security locked drive is instant secure erase - and that is exactly what we wish.
secure erase.jpg

erase.jpg

After this operation my HGST ssd forgot about security locking and all this self-encrypting bullshit. But you will need to format it to full capacity first thing because all LBA bands will be free and empty so that drive will report zero available capacity.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm positive enough that your case is completely similar as far as I can see ;)
 
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