cheap used or new ssd at least 120GB

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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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Maybe a dumb question, but could @wildpig1234 s Toshiba drives be formatted for something other than 512 byte sectors (i.e. 520, 528, etc.)? I have limited experience with this, other than picking up some NetApp drives in the past and reformatting them from 520 to 512 using the guide here in the forums. I wasn't using Windows, so don't know how they would have looked to Windows. In Linux, it was like they didn't even exist, until I checked the logs per this post and was able to successfully reformat from 520 to 512:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/how-to-reformat-hdd-ssd-to-512b-sector-size.4968/

But, again these drives are SATA, so maybe that's not a thing for SATA? But might explain why they all seem to have identical issues.
 
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wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Markess said:
Maybe a dumb question, but could @wildpig1234 s Toshiba drives be formatted for something other than 512 byte sectors (i.e. 520, 528, etc.)? I have limited experience with this, other than picking up some NetApp drives in the past and reformatting them from 520 to 512 using the guide here in the forums. I wasn't using Windows, so don't know how they would have looked to Windows. In Linux, it was like they didn't even exist, until I checked the logs per this post and was able to successfully reformat from 520 to 512:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/how-to-reformat-hdd-ssd-to-512b-sector-size.4968/

But, again these drives are SATA, so maybe that's not a thing for SATA? But might explain why they all seem to have identical issues.
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but even if they were formated in other than 512 byte sectors, the bios should still detect the drives correctly as toshiba 120GB and not Phsion 2mb ssd? i kinda like the fallback firmware thing mentioned by piglover earlier. But it just seems weird to me that someone would have 5 of these with identical issue...

Anyone whos expert at hdd/ssd want to try their hands? I might ship you one and if you can revive it, you are obviously free to keep one ;)
 
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n17ikh

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Markess

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wildpig1234 said:
but even if they were formated in other than 512 byte sectors, the bios should still detect the drives correctly as toshiba 120GB and not Phsion 2mb ssd?
Click to expand...
Maybe? I've not seen this before, so I'm purely speculating. I know if you plug a bunch of 520 or 528 byte sector SAS drives into an HBA they will usually be invisible to Windows because the controller can't identify/initialize them correctly. I would think its possible that a SATA controller could have a similar issue too. Just because the BIOS controlling the SATA ports is on the motherboard I don't know that it would be any better at detecting/probing incompatible hardware than an HBA with BIOS on the card would. Maybe Phison 2mb is what a 520/528 formatted drive looks like to a SATA controller expecting 512 format. Maybe it can only read the first 2mb so thinks that's all that's there?

wildpig1234 said:
So why or how would someone has 5 identical ssd all in factory mode?
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Maybe these were left over after data recovery and someone thought to sell them on Ebay? Regardless, its really really strange that every one has the same issue.
 
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wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Markess said:
Maybe? I've not seen this before, so I'm purely speculating. I know if you plug a bunch of 520 or 528 byte sector SAS drives into an HBA they will usually be invisible to Windows because the controller can't identify/initialize them correctly. I would think its possible that a SATA controller could have a similar issue too. Just because the BIOS controlling the SATA ports is on the motherboard I don't know that it would be any better at detecting/probing incompatible hardware than an HBA with BIOS on the card would. Maybe Phison 2mb is what a 520/528 formatted drive looks like to a SATA controller expecting 512 format. Maybe it can only read the first 2mb so thinks that's all that's there?/QUOTE]
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So how can you even reformat them back to 512 if that was the case? how can you do that when even the controller doesn't see them or see them incorrectly? I plugged these into a dell perc sas controller and they were not listed while the controller goes thr its loading process. These drives were detected as phison ssd plugged in to the onboard sata controller for HP42o. They were not detected by the dell t5500 onboard sata controller....
 
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