I've messed with SAS cards and drives some in the past but I'm not super experienced at it.
So, I got my hands on some 10TB HGST drives. The objective is to wipe the data on the drives, verify that they are wiped, and have a log of both the wipe and verification, and then I can do whatever with them.
But, I'm having trouble getting them to work with a SAS card. I tried connecting the drives to a Dell Perc H330. The Perc recognizes there are drives but declares all of them as failed. I thought I had 8 drives connected but I see only 7 in the below pic. I'll sort that out later.
I am using some 3D printed screwless tray caddies rather than the official Dell caddies. I don't think that matters but I mention it just in case. Yes, in the pic below all but 1 drive is disconnected.
Earlier I had 8 Dell branded drives connected to the Perc H330 card and had no issues. I tried an HPE branded drive and it said Failed too so I thought maybe the Perc was just not cooperating with non Dell branded drives. I did try updating the Perc H330 to the latest firmware (25.5.8.0001, A14) in case that might help but it did not.
In the end I tried the drives in a PowerEdge T420 with one of the SAS cards that was used with the drives in their previous server, a SAS2008 card, also known as a 9211-8i. However, I flashed the card to IT when previously the card was IR. Here is a pic showing info of one of the drives. Curiously, it shows the drive as having 0 size.
There is a Format and Verify option in this pic. Format is the white rectangle. However, I'd rather not Format and Verify the drives one by one, assuming this option would work at all when something seems to be amiss.
With the T420 and 9211-8i I tried booting in to PartedMagic, Fedora Live USB, and Windows Server 2016. In the Linux based OSes I was able to see the drives if I ran lsblk in Terminal, but other than that I couldn't do anything with the drives. For example they weren't listed in gparted as devices that I could work with. In Win Server the drives were listed in Disk Management but they were offline and I couldn't just toggle them online. When I tried that I got a vague error message that I don't remember right now.
One thing I hadn't thought of trying until just now was that I could take those same Dell branded SAS drives that worked for me earlier and use them to check if my T420 + 9211-8i setup is working at all.
I'm guessing I'm missing something, or multiple things, but what can I do to get these 10TB drives working?
So, I got my hands on some 10TB HGST drives. The objective is to wipe the data on the drives, verify that they are wiped, and have a log of both the wipe and verification, and then I can do whatever with them.
But, I'm having trouble getting them to work with a SAS card. I tried connecting the drives to a Dell Perc H330. The Perc recognizes there are drives but declares all of them as failed. I thought I had 8 drives connected but I see only 7 in the below pic. I'll sort that out later.
I am using some 3D printed screwless tray caddies rather than the official Dell caddies. I don't think that matters but I mention it just in case. Yes, in the pic below all but 1 drive is disconnected.
Earlier I had 8 Dell branded drives connected to the Perc H330 card and had no issues. I tried an HPE branded drive and it said Failed too so I thought maybe the Perc was just not cooperating with non Dell branded drives. I did try updating the Perc H330 to the latest firmware (25.5.8.0001, A14) in case that might help but it did not.
In the end I tried the drives in a PowerEdge T420 with one of the SAS cards that was used with the drives in their previous server, a SAS2008 card, also known as a 9211-8i. However, I flashed the card to IT when previously the card was IR. Here is a pic showing info of one of the drives. Curiously, it shows the drive as having 0 size.
There is a Format and Verify option in this pic. Format is the white rectangle. However, I'd rather not Format and Verify the drives one by one, assuming this option would work at all when something seems to be amiss.
With the T420 and 9211-8i I tried booting in to PartedMagic, Fedora Live USB, and Windows Server 2016. In the Linux based OSes I was able to see the drives if I ran lsblk in Terminal, but other than that I couldn't do anything with the drives. For example they weren't listed in gparted as devices that I could work with. In Win Server the drives were listed in Disk Management but they were offline and I couldn't just toggle them online. When I tried that I got a vague error message that I don't remember right now.
One thing I hadn't thought of trying until just now was that I could take those same Dell branded SAS drives that worked for me earlier and use them to check if my T420 + 9211-8i setup is working at all.
I'm guessing I'm missing something, or multiple things, but what can I do to get these 10TB drives working?
