Hi,
so I have some SAS hard disks. I started formatting them, using sg_format. Like so:
sg_format --format --size=4096 --verbose /sev/sgX
however, by accident, I rebooted my machine before sg_format was complete, as I let it run in the background.
After I realised my mistake, I checked and indeed found that my drives report a size of 0. And I cannot access them.
In "dmesg" I can see the error "cannot read partition table: medium format corrupted".
So I just tried sg_format once again. And this time let it complete.
Unfortunately, the sg_format utility, after it has reached 100%, reports "an error occured: device reset during format", however I did not do any manual device resets, I really let everything just sit there and let it format.
Still dmesg reports "medium format corrupted".
I tried sg_format again....... and of course I get the same result. At least now under lsblk my drive is reported as 12TB, which is good, but still I cannot use it ("cannot read partition table" and "I/O error" are common errors I get when I try to access this disk).
I don't think the disk is actually bad, as I could access it before, but it had some elements in the grown defect list and I read that I can clear the grown defect list and force a complete surface check when a sg_format is issued. So that was the reason I did this. It hat 1 element in the grown defect list, and before using the disk for my valuable data, I wanted to make sure that there were not more defects. So this was the initial reason for doing this.
Did I just brick the disk, or is it somehow possible to recover? I mean, every time I run sg_format, it runs through without problems, it's just the disk don't let me access. Also I cannot run smartctl, this one claims "the device is not ready". I decided today I will let it sit there for the whole day, powered on, to see if it somehow recovers.
For one other disk I was able to fix this: it also had 2 or 3 elements in the grown defect list, then I let sg_format run, the grown defect list was set to zero, and then I let badblocks run. Took me almost one week, but it reported zero errors, the background medium scan also reports zero errors and the grown defect list stays so far at 0 elements, so I would say this particular disk can be used. But the other one seems to be bricked somehow.
Any possibility to recover?
one indicator that the disk is probably good is, that sg_logs reports zero errors, like no ECC recovered, no uncorrectable errors and so on. It's just that Linux reports it cannot read the partition table (which is true because the disk is formatted and therefore there is no partition table) and that the medium format is corrupted, which should not be true as sg_format completed......
so I have some SAS hard disks. I started formatting them, using sg_format. Like so:
sg_format --format --size=4096 --verbose /sev/sgX
however, by accident, I rebooted my machine before sg_format was complete, as I let it run in the background.
After I realised my mistake, I checked and indeed found that my drives report a size of 0. And I cannot access them.
In "dmesg" I can see the error "cannot read partition table: medium format corrupted".
So I just tried sg_format once again. And this time let it complete.
Unfortunately, the sg_format utility, after it has reached 100%, reports "an error occured: device reset during format", however I did not do any manual device resets, I really let everything just sit there and let it format.
Still dmesg reports "medium format corrupted".
I tried sg_format again....... and of course I get the same result. At least now under lsblk my drive is reported as 12TB, which is good, but still I cannot use it ("cannot read partition table" and "I/O error" are common errors I get when I try to access this disk).
I don't think the disk is actually bad, as I could access it before, but it had some elements in the grown defect list and I read that I can clear the grown defect list and force a complete surface check when a sg_format is issued. So that was the reason I did this. It hat 1 element in the grown defect list, and before using the disk for my valuable data, I wanted to make sure that there were not more defects. So this was the initial reason for doing this.
Did I just brick the disk, or is it somehow possible to recover? I mean, every time I run sg_format, it runs through without problems, it's just the disk don't let me access. Also I cannot run smartctl, this one claims "the device is not ready". I decided today I will let it sit there for the whole day, powered on, to see if it somehow recovers.
For one other disk I was able to fix this: it also had 2 or 3 elements in the grown defect list, then I let sg_format run, the grown defect list was set to zero, and then I let badblocks run. Took me almost one week, but it reported zero errors, the background medium scan also reports zero errors and the grown defect list stays so far at 0 elements, so I would say this particular disk can be used. But the other one seems to be bricked somehow.
Any possibility to recover?
one indicator that the disk is probably good is, that sg_logs reports zero errors, like no ECC recovered, no uncorrectable errors and so on. It's just that Linux reports it cannot read the partition table (which is true because the disk is formatted and therefore there is no partition table) and that the medium format is corrupted, which should not be true as sg_format completed......
