The Request Could Not be Completed Because of an I/O Device Error

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frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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I recently bought a Seagate Constellation ES ST32000444SS and was surprised when it would not work with the Dell PERC H310 I had. I was able to get them to work together using the following method.

Using the Dell PERC H310 P20 firmware the drive was shown as blocked by the card since it did not have the Dell certified firmware on the drive even though it was the exact same model.
The SAS card was flashed using the following:
PERC H310 was flashed to LSI-9211-8i P7 IT mode firmware
card was then flashed to LSI-9211-8i P16 IT mode firmware (not sure if this step was necessary)
card was then flashed to LSI-9211-8i P20 (Avago) IT mode firmware and BIOS (to bring it to the current/latest firmware/BIOS)

The drive was then recognized by the card and would appear in the drive manager within windows
The drive could not be initialized or formatted at this point within windows (likely due to 520k block size)
I tried using the drive format utility built into the LSI card firmware/BIOS but the same issue was seen afterwards (took 4-5 hours)
I was able to use sg_tools and run the commands as suggested (took 4-5 hours) to convert the block size to 512k
sg_scan (to get the PD number - mine was PD0)
sg_format --format --size=512 --six -v PD# (replaceing PD# with PD0)


After this completed the drive looked normal within windows but would still not initialize
The drive was set to offline, then set back to online (within the windows drive manager)
I was then able to format the drive using GPT/NTFS (full format took about 4-5 hours)

Now the drive is up and running.

I found an article how to modify the firmware using a hex editor to make it flashable with the dell firmware utility and make it usable with the DELL PERC H310 card firmware. I'm tempted to buy another one just to try it out.

Thought this may help others trying to accomplish the same feat. Thanks for the info you guys, that was the final piece to the puzzle. :)
Can you link said article please?
 

wperry1

New Member
Mar 13, 2020
1
1
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Just download sg_utils for Windows, open a cmd prompt window there and run the command

sg_scan.exe to get device PD#s

then

sg_format.exe --format --size=512 --six -v PD#
I know this is an old thread but this info is still valid. You just save me from having to return a handful of these drives I just bought off of ebay. Thank you for putting this up.

WP
 
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