Seagate EXOS 16 16TB Whitelabel SAS *funk* in the S.M.A.R.T

[itronin]

I'm looking for thoughts, comments, ridicule, ideas and anything else.

Edit: TLDR: Basically I'm not getting any extended SMART data. Just Health Status: OK - which I'm not sure I trust based on other indicators.

At the end of the year I had some money I could spend and picked up some Seagate EXOS 16 16TB Whitelabel SAS Drives. "Refurbished, Wiped, Tested etc. etc."
All purchased from a reseller I've done business with before and that has been very good about resolving issues.
Today, I talked on the phone to the reseller about my SMART challenges and they are going back to their vendor to see what is going on.
I also asked them to extend the return period - to which they agreed.
I'm thinking some icky firmware or perhaps "bad things" were done to the firmware.

Drives have a typical generic Seagate whitelabel on the drive. Some of the drives were kinda beat up. some were pristine. I only took pictures of ones that caused me a little concern. Image attached more for the label than the condition of the drive. (I don't usually care about the appearance of the drive so long as it works, was tested and properly refurbished. Actual smartctl output is included below.



I plugged the drives into a test box with a LSI flashed P20 HP 220 to take a quick peak. Hmm...

SMART Health Status: OK

Drive temps all 0, but trip temp also 0. <--- oh boy says me.

and then this where I expected some extended data:

Error Counter logging not supported
[GLTSD (Global Logging Target Save Disable) set. Enable Save with '-S on']
Device does not support Self Test logging

I can start a short SMART test but unsurprisingly there's no evidence that it has been run after it (should have) completed.

alright well they are SAS3 drives and that system has some old software and a SAS2 controller sooooo
I plugged them into where I planned to leave them on a system with a brand new SAS/SATA flashed to P17 firmware LSI 9400-16i.

same thing for drive temps and error counter logging not supported.
Drives were all 512bs so I figured we'll let's put them through a warmup and see if any squeal.
reformatted them to 4K - no errors, took about 40 hours (which I expected).
None of the drives sound like a Tie Fighter going by or the MF aborting a jump to hyperspace. In fact all the drives are quite quiet.

But still the same thing for extended S.M.A.R.T data or rather lack of it.

Thinking perhaps I have an issue with my 9400 I popped a drive into a system with a LSI 9300-8i to see.

same thing.

Popped an HGST SSD into the system with the 9300 and one into a system with the 9400 and I get extended smart data.

Actual SMART output

Spoiler: Baremetal TNC 12.0-U1.1, LSI 9300-8i, Seagate EXOS 16, HGST SSD

Seagate EXOS 16, 16TB, Whitelabel SAS Drive

root@freenas42[~]# smartctl -a /dev/da4
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:
Product: OOS16000G
Revision: BE86
Compliance: SPC-5
User Capacity: 16,000,900,661,248 bytes [16.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000c500ae29df7b
Serial number: 0000969G0000C944DYNC
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Tue Feb 2 17:15:22 2021 MST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK
Current Drive Temperature: 0 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 0 C

Elements in grown defect list: 0

Error Counter logging not supported


[GLTSD (Global Logging Target Save Disable) set. Enable Save with '-S on']
Device does not support Self Test logging

For comparison HGST 3.2TB SAS SSD on same system

root@freenas42[~]# smartctl -a /dev/da1
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HBTAC2DH2SUN3.2T
Revision: B170
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 3,200,631,791,616 bytes [3.20 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is resource provisioned, LBPRZ=1
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Form Factor: 2.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca08c0194ec
Serial number: 001732JDVYZX 5RV0VYZX
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Tue Feb 2 17:15:11 2021 MST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Percentage used endurance indicator: 0%
Current Drive Temperature: 35 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 70 C

Manufactured in week 32 of year 2017
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 0
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 0
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 0
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 0
Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 1225899

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 0 6854.347 0
write: 0 0 0 0 0 7528.168 0

Non-medium error count: 0

No Self-tests have been logged

Spoiler: ESXI 6.7 Guest TNC-12-0-U1.1, LSI 9400-16i pass-through

root@tnc72[~]# smartctl -a /dev/da2
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:
Product: OOS16000G
Revision: BE86
Compliance: SPC-5
User Capacity: 16,000,900,661,248 bytes [16.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000c500ae6278d3
Serial number: 0000KA3R0000C0032H4V
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Tue Feb 2 17:20:36 2021 MST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK
Current Drive Temperature: 0 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 0 C

Elements in grown defect list: 0

Error Counter logging not supported


[GLTSD (Global Logging Target Save Disable) set. Enable Save with '-S on']
Device does not support Self Test logging

For Comparison HGST 3.2TB SAS SSD on same system

root@tnc72[~]# smartctl -a /dev/da1
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HBTAC2DH2SUN3.2T
Revision: B170
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 3,200,631,791,616 bytes [3.20 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is resource provisioned, LBPRZ=1
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Form Factor: 2.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca08c01db4c
Serial number: 001732JD0N8X 5RV10N8X
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Tue Feb 2 17:20:22 2021 MST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Percentage used endurance indicator: 0%
Current Drive Temperature: 35 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 70 C

Manufactured in week 32 of year 2017
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 0
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 0
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 0
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 0
Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 1239017

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 0 6797.829 0
write: 0 0 0 0 0 7525.360 0

Non-medium error count: 0

No Self-tests have been logged

 

[bilbo1337]

Looks like they messed up when refurbishing these drives. But hey, if it works and you got a good deal..

 

[itronin]

Thank you for the comment. That is what I am starting to believe because as of a few minutes ago the reseller emailed that their drive vendor is getting new firmware from Seagate and the oddball firmware is apparently something that just happened (so I'm the first to report this ???)... hard to believe. Drive temp and error rates and SMART health status I can trust I do require.

Seller has agreed to take the drives back if the new firmware does not provide SMART data.

 

[Whaaat]

Did you try to reflash the firmware to the original Seagate E003 for this drive?

 

[itronin]

@Whaaat Thank you very kindly for the download. I'm guessing this firmware is for a retail EXOS 16?

That may come in handy.

I had not searched and given the $$$ involved (Drives >= 30) I'm waiting just a bit to see what the reseller will provide from their vendor. I've pulled the bits from the link you provided and may give that a go. The official Seagate site id'd the drive and model number from the S/N but no firmware downloads available (not surprising for a w/l drive).

 

[Whaaat]

The official Seagate site id'd the drive and model number from the S/N but no firmware downloads available (not surprising for a w/l drive).

they do not allow to download the firmware or see the version number for S/N from your photo, but the date of the most recent firmware is shown and that is yesterday, hmm.

 

[itronin]

Received word from the reseller that they expect new whitelabel bits on Monday from their vendor (via Seagate).

I went ahead and tried out the retail firmware on one of the whitelabel drives. Loaded fine and interestingly enough there was *some* historical data that I'm going to guess was generated as part of testing a newly refurbished drive. Drive temps now reporting and are what I would expect compared to my 8TB HGST's. I was able to "set" the save test results too and ran a short test to confirm.

A note: As I mentioned I had reblocked the drivs to 4k with the whitelabel firmware.
The new firmware sees the format as corrupt and can't determine the blocksize.
Unfortunately the drive can't quick format from a corrupted format so I've started a normal format on the drive with new firmware.
I guess I'll know in about 40 hours how that progresses.
On the plus side exercising the drive is good and I may abbreviate the "bad blocks" since all the drives will have now been long formatted twice.

I am curious to try the bits I'm going to get from the reseller (assuming I do) and see if after updating to that firmware whether a reformat is again required.

@Whaaat - Thank you again for providing the bits to download!!

I've been fooling with legacy HGST drives for a while and was not up to speed either on seachest utilities or that folks were collecting bits for these drive (variations).