SAS drives appearing as 0Gb and cannot be formatted

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sparesim

New Member
Oct 12, 2015
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Hi I need some help here, I bought 10 IBM system X 600Gb SAS drives and all of them appear as 0Gb on my LSI 2008 card (running IT mode). When I try to format them in the LSI bios it comes back as format failed. They seem to be spinning and get hot so mechanically they seem ok. I am at a lost as to what to do. The previous owner said they were running in a raid and I have to delete the raid information. How can I do that? The LSI card indicates they are not members of an array.
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
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The disk manufacturer/ model numbers might help get a better answer. How are they configured? 520B, 528B or 512B sectors? Try running SG tools on them and see if you get a clue as to what you have and change it to 512B if needed :)
 

sparesim

New Member
Oct 12, 2015
12
1
3
69
The disk manufacturer/ model numbers might help get a better answer. How are they configured? 520B, 528B or 512B sectors? Try running SG tools on them and see if you get a clue as to what you have and change it to 512B if needed :)
Thanks for your help, the problem is I cannot get the drives to be ready. Here is what happens when I run smartctl:
=============================================================
smartctl -a -T verypermissive /dev/sda
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [i686-linux-3.10.4-pmagic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, smartmontools

Vendor: IBM-ESXS
Product: ST9600204SS
Revision: B548
Logical Unit id: 0x5000c50039c3f227
Serial number: 6WN0M83H0000B135LPAX
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS
Local Time is: Tue Mar 27 19:04:57 2018 UTC
device is NOT READY (e.g. spun down, busy)
Device does not support SMART

Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging
==============================================================

If I try to format I get

=============================================================

sg_format --format --size=512 /dev/sda
IBM-ESXS ST9600204SS B548 peripheral_type: disk [0x0]
<< supports protection information>>
MODE SENSE (10) command, device not ready
try '-v' for more information
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
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Canada
Seagate...why is it always freakin' Seagate...I swear that company haunts my dreams :p:D

Perhaps the Firmware is locked to System X ?
There is firmware for that particular disk on the Dell site somewhere bundled with a windows loader thingy, I do remember seeing it somewhere, dunno if IBM have a generic firmware or not, might be worth asking them, or at least confirming with them that the firmware is locked :)