Is it possible to get these SAS Hitachi drives to work on a "normal" system?

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mzfk

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Feb 11, 2019
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Anybody get solution for this HGST drives?

i try to reset SED state on this drive but sedutils can't see it. Seatools enterprise can see this drive but not have similar flags ....

Bump.
 

mzfk

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Feb 11, 2019
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look like this disk (HUC106060css60 and similar) not support SED and therefore it can be formatted ordinary SAS controller in IT mode.

I tried any wariations sg_format with --six --fmtinfo=0,1,2, 3 options and differential block sizes - 512, 520 , and 528 sec.

any kind of format processed without error but no result at all :(
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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look like this disk (HUC106060css60 and similar) not support SED and therefore it can be formatted ordinary SAS controller in IT mode.

I tried any wariations sg_format with --six --fmtinfo=0,1,2, 3 options and differential block sizes - 512, 520 , and 528 sec.

any kind of format processed without error but no result at all :(
How fast did the format complete? HGST supports the FFMT flag in mode page 0:
HGST Hard Disk Drive Specification said:
FFMT (Fast Format Enable) bit allows the formatting of the drive without any writes to the customer media. All format operations are allowed including changing block sizes and manipulating defects. The drive will operate normally after a fast format with the following caveat: since no data is written to any customer data blocks as a result of a Fast Format operation, there is a possibility that a read attempt to any particular block (without having previously written to that block) will result in an unrecoverable data error. This will most likely happen if the block size is changed as every LBA will contain data of an incorrect length and apparently an incorrect starting point. It is also possible to generate an uncorrectable data error without changing block sizes if the defect list is shortened and previously bad blocks become visible in the customer address space. Of course ALL DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST as the result of any format operation and so any attempt to read blocks which have not been written to will result in unpredictable behavior.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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about 70 min for 600 mb disk
That sounds like it did a real format. The only other thing I could suggest is to look at the FFMT flags in the Format Unit command:
HGST Hard Disk Drive Specification - Format Unit said:
FFMT specifies the scope of the format command.
FFMT Description
00b
Perform defect management and initialize media to the new format.
01b Perform defect management but do not initialize the media. May result in any medium error on read before write.
10b Change block size only. May only be used on transitions of physically compatible size such as between 512 + end-to-end protection and 520. May result in end-to-end protection errors on read before write.
11b Reserved
 

BuZa

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Feb 13, 2019
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Hello! There is another utility for work with firmware in the sg package: sg_ses_microcode

Has anyone tried to update the microcode using this tool?

Tell someone how and how you can change the parameter WCE?
 
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mzfk

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Feb 11, 2019
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Hello! There is another utility for work with firmware in the sg package: sg_ses_microcode

Has anyone tried to update the microcode using this tool?

Tell someone how and how you can change the parameter WCE?

WCE mean "Write Cache Enable" i don't think that it's a problem in this case.

But about microcode update: - i download firmware update packacke from DELL, named SAS-Drive_Firmware_5WJWP_LN_A440_A05.BIN

manually extract it with option --extract and run these command

./sasdupie -u -d -p payload/

procedure complete without error but as i see in debug.log "no device updated" :(

btw - in directory payload you can find firmware for this drive named A440.fwh for further experiments :)
 

BuZa

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Feb 13, 2019
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Who has the firmware for HUC109060CSS600 (Cobra E), HUC106060CSS600, HUC106030CSS600 (Cobra D), lay out, please. I have these discs under VPS DKR5D, DKR5C. It seems to me, I have made much progress in solving these case. I need different versions of the firmware for experiments. So far I have only A5B0 version.
 

mzfk

New Member
Feb 11, 2019
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Who has the firmware for HUC109060CSS600 (Cobra E), HUC106060CSS600, HUC106030CSS600 (Cobra D), lay out, please. I have these discs under VPS DKR5D, DKR5C. It seems to me, I have made much progress in solving these case. I need different versions of the firmware for experiments. So far I have only A5B0 version.

hi, i have tons of these drives , different versions and revisions.

If you give me instructions how to get firmware from it - i will send firmware to you!
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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Great Thanks! Suspiciously small file. A5B0 (civil) and H440 (Dell) by 926 kb. 512 kb is the maximum amount of ROM disk?
I don't know about these drives (or the details at this level for pretty much any modern drive, even) but Seagate started storing a large portion of the firmware on the media back in the days of the original Barracuda drives - the flash-resident part of the firmware was just enough to spin the disk up, load the heads and seek to a specific area in order to load the remainder of the firmware from disk. If you configured the drive to wait for a host command to spin up, responses to the host were pretty simplistic - you couldn't even get the exact model number.

From what I've casually observed in the "we sell drive logic boards to help recover data from dead drives" market, those boards are generally sold with specific firmware versions listed, presumably to ensure a match between the piece on the drive's media and the piece in flash.
 

BuZa

New Member
Feb 13, 2019
13
1
3
I don't know about these drives (or the details at this level for pretty much any modern drive, even) but Seagate started storing a large portion of the firmware on the media back in the days of the original Barracuda drives - the flash-resident part of the firmware was just enough to spin the disk up, load the heads and seek to a specific area in order to load the remainder of the firmware from disk. If you configured the drive to wait for a host command to spin up, responses to the host were pretty simplistic - you couldn't even get the exact model number.

From what I've casually observed in the "we sell drive logic boards to help recover data from dead drives" market, those boards are generally sold with specific firmware versions listed, presumably to ensure a match between the piece on the drive's media and the piece in flash.
Now im working with HGST DKR5D and DKR5C.

Has anyone analyzed the civil HUС1090 or HUС1060? What is the amount of flash?

I tried to write the MBR directly to disk. The command is executed, the data is recorded, the disk even becomes visible to the operating systems. Even it turns out to write something to disk. But after a while, the MBR mysteriously disappears and the disk becomes inaccessible again.

I am trying to put a controller board from a similar drive for EMC. With firmware CD0A202, which works great. On it, too, 512kb flash. Does not help. It looks like the differences are very deep.
 
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