SAS ST4000NM0034 recognized in LSI, Trunas, Spun up but can't wipe

Hi all, looking for guidance

I went and purchased a bunch of ebay end of life specials for cheapy cheapy to replace my array of RAIDZ2 8 Wide (1VDEV) of dying disks. These replacements are 2016 HPE branded SAS ST4000NM0034 4TB disks. I’ve already overcome the dreaded 3.3v on pin 3 issue to get recognition on the HBA controller

02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)

Next issue.
The wipe command doesn’t show up in the GUI when going to storage>disks.
The SAS disks show up (I’ve disconnected the SATA disks) but are 0B in size
They are there, but no option to wipe. So I tried CLI, which took overnight, no dice there.

example:

root@truenas[~]# sg_format --format --ffmt=1 /dev/sda
SEAGATE SMKR4000S5xeN7.2 3P02 peripheral_type: disk [0x0]
<< supports protection information>>
Unit serial number: Z4F0S5PP0000R633REY8
LU name: 5000c5008536601f
Mode Sense (block descriptor) data, prior to changes:
<<< longlba flag set (64 bit lba) >>>
Number of blocks=7648717976 [0x1c7e62c98]
Block size=520 [0x208]

A FORMAT UNIT will commence in 15 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sda will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort

Should I be digging deeper into the HBA controller side or TrueNAS side? My google-fu is fairly exhausted.

Help?

root@truenas[~]# sedutil-cli --scan
Scanning for Opal compliant disks
/dev/sda No SMKR4000S5xeN7.2 3P02
/dev/sdb No SMKR4000S5xeN7.2 3P02
/dev/sdc 2 KINGSTON SKC600256G S4800105
No more disks present ending scan
root@truenas[~]#

Alright, a low level format to 512b sectors vs the native 520b sectors resolved the issue for me.

Eg:
sg_format -v --format --size=512 /dev/sda

Note: I accidentally killed the calling terminal on the sg_format process, but it survived and ran overnight to completion in the background.

1 Like

Yup, yup.
520 ≠ 512

The 520-byte sectors are indeed the root cause here, and is common with OEM rebranded/re-firmwared drives.

To avoid losing the terminal you can open a tmux session over SSH and detach from it for future drives. :slight_smile: