I have a pile of 2.5" SAS SSD I took out of a flash array from an old storage unit. The storage (Tegile) was encrypted and empty on decomm. There is no data on there of use.
I want to reuse them in some Dell 620 Servers we had laying around, but when I install the SSD the Dell says the disks are “Foreign” and refuse to do anything with them. No options are available. Done the usual reset of the PERC and imported the disk settings in accordance with the Dell Support site instructions, but nothing changes and no options appear. It looks like there is some sort of security block on the drives themselves stopping me from doing anything. Tried a few and they all act the same way.
I bought an SAS USB drive caddy for my Windows 10 workstation to wipe the drives directly. DiskPart and two hard drive utilities cannot clear / wipe or format the drive without throwing some sort of error. They see them, they just can’t interact with them in any way.
Windows Disk Management sees the drive as Unknown, but when I go to initialize the drive (both MBR and GPT) it say’s it can’t due to an I/O error.
Anybody run into this before? Need a way to force a wipe or format of these drives.
I had an ssd that failed, which put it into a read-only mode which gave similar errors. Only mentioning this as something to keep in mind. Not sure this sort of fail-safe mechanism is used for SAS SSDs though.
Cheers @Antonius I think @wendell was on the money, but am working remotely today. Won’t be able to check the 520 > 512 until later in the week. It’s a good thing, as I have two dozen of the SSD I can hopefully fix and reuse with his method. I’ll report back when I know more.
mint@mint:~$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sg7
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.15.0-41-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: HGST HUSMR1650ASS201
Serial Number: 0QW5DPXA
Add. Product Id: 13FD6710
Firmware Version: 1.5301
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 3c
SATA Version is: SATA 3.2, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Fri Mar 1 14:44:02 2024 UTC
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
mint@mint:~$ sudo sg_format -v --format --size=512 /dev/sdh
Generic External 0157 peripheral_type: disk [0x0]
PROTECT=1
<< supports protection information>>
Unit serial number: 0QW5DPXA
LU name: 5000cca04e42343f
mode sense(10) cdb: [5a 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 fc 00]
mode sense(10):
Fixed format, current; Sense key: Illegal Request
Additional sense: Invalid field in cdb
bad field in MODE SENSE (10) [mode_page 1 not supported?]
(Also tried:
sudo sg_format -S -v --format --size=512 /dev/sdh
sudo sg_format -S -v --format --size=520 /dev/sdh
to same result)
Finally, found some SAS drives could be wiped with SeaTools for Linux, installed the latest and it refuses to run any wipe or erase function. Just says “Failed to start” on any function.
mint@mint:~$ sudo sg_sanitize -B -v /dev/sdh
Generic External 0157 peripheral_type: disk [0x0]
PROTECT=1
<< supports protection information>>
Unit serial number: 0QW5DPXA
LU name: 5000cca04e42343f
A SANITIZE will commence in 15 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
A SANITIZE will commence in 10 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
A SANITIZE will commence in 5 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
Sanitize:
Fixed format, current; Sense key: Illegal Request
Additional sense: Invalid command operation code
Sanitize failed: Illegal request, Invalid opcode, type: sense key + asc,ascq
mint@mint:~$ sudo sg_sanitize --overwrite --zero /dev/sdh
Generic External 0157 peripheral_type: disk [0x0]
<< supports protection information>>
Unit serial number: 0QW5DPXA
LU name: 5000cca04e42343f
A SANITIZE will commence in 15 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
A SANITIZE will commence in 10 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
A SANITIZE will commence in 5 seconds
ALL data on /dev/sdh will be DESTROYED
Press control-C to abort
Sanitize failed: Illegal request, Invalid opcode
sg_sanitize failed: Illegal request, Invalid opcode
Does the H330 let you “cleanly” pass thorough the disk to linux? If not that might be a block to executing sg_utils. it makes sense that a USB adapter might not expose the drive to lower level commands.
@twin_savage I removed the drives and put them in a SAS USB3 caddy. So I have direct drive access with a Linux live CD. Once I get them formatted I can reinstall them and use them in the array.
I haven’t yet used a USB-SAS bridge, but back in the day most USB-SATA bridges couldn’t pass low level commands (like a firmware update) to the disks attached to them.
It’s possible something similar could happen with the SAS-USB bridge?
Not to derail the conversation, but what chipset does your SAS USB3 caddy use? I’m curious because these seem to be new.
So coming close to quitting on this. I contacted the vendor of the storage company and they want ungodly amounts of money to put a support contract in place with no guarantees. Not happening.
WD is saying the drives are OEM and their firmware isn’t compatible. According to them, there are no HGST specific utilities (despite being listed in their web pages) and to use their WD Dashboard software, which gives me no options to change anything or update firmware. I finally got sedutils to work and they are still blocked when using the PSID reset method.
Again, there is nothing on these drives I need so I’m happy to experiment as needed, but I’m running out of (reasonable) options.
Thanks all.
$ sudo ./sedutil-cli --scan
Scanning for Opal compliant disks
/dev/nvme0 No PCIe SSD EIFM51.1
/dev/nvme1 No Sabrent Rocket Q4 RKT40Q.1
/dev/nvme2 No PCIe SSD EIFM31.4
/dev/sda 2 Samsung SSD 870 EVO 2TB SVT02B6Q
/dev/sdb 2 Samsung SSD 870 EVO 2TB SVT02B6Q
/dev/sdc No USB Flash Drive 2.00
/dev/sdd No
/dev/sde No HGST HUSMR1650ASS201 1.5301
No more disks present ending scan
$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sde
/dev/sde:
ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: HGST HUSMR1650ASS201
Serial Number: 0QW5DPXA
Firmware Revision: 1.5301
Media Serial Num: 0QW5DPXA
Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
Used: ATA-8-ACS revision 3c
Supported: 8 7 6 5
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 0
heads 16 0
sectors/track 63 0
--
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 976773168
READ_LOG_EXT(0,0) failed: Input/output error
Logical Sector size: 512 bytes
Physical Sector size: 512 bytes
Logical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytes
device size with M = 1024*1024: 476940 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 500107 MBytes (500 GB)
cache/buffer size = unknown
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 1 Current = 1
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
* Software settings preservation
Checksum: correct
$ sudo ./sedutil-cli -vvvvv --yesIreallywanttoERASEALLmydatausingthePSID NXZE4ADWW0M6VSKM4WZE /dev/sde > revert.log
Log level set to DBG4
sedutil version : 1.20.0
Creating DtaResponse()
Creating DtaResponse()
DtaDevOS::init /dev/sde
Creating DtaDevLinuxSata::DtaDev() /dev/sde
Entering DtaDevLinuxSata::identify()
Entering DtaDev::discovery0()
Entering DtaDevLinuxSata::sendCmd
Send D0 request to device failed 255
Entering DtaDev::isPresent() 1
Entering DtaDev::isAnySSC 0
Invalid or unsupported disk /dev/sde
Destroying DtaDevOS
Destroying DtaDevLinuxSata
Destroying DtaResponse
I had a very similar situation to you where I pulled some SSDs from a Tegile. Like yours they are HGST but different model numbers. Here are my lessons learned.
Once a pool is created on the drives within the Tegile OS they are encrypted at locked. Literally nothing I did would unlock them even with the PSID. I was lucky enough to still have the Tegile and was able to boot back into Intelliflash where I was able to destroy the LUNs, projects, and pool. Once that was accomplished I was able secure erase them from the array GUI.
That “fixed” most of the drives however there were several that I was getting weird issues similar to what you are seeing with yours. They are not recognized with sedutil, sg_sanitize wouldn’t work, and smartctl couldn’t see all of the SMART data. I eventually figured out that these drives had SCSI reservations on them and for what ever reason wasn’t cleared when doing the secure erase from within the Tegile GUI.
From limited understanding depending what type of reservation it is any other host except for the host that created the reservation is unable to use the disk. Mine had exclusive write reservations which made them essentially read only. After removing the reservation all was well and the drives were able to be formatted and used normally.
These are the commands that I ran to remove the SCSI reservations from mine. The first command checks for reservations. The second registered a new reservation tied to the host that the drive is currently in. The third command removes the reservation created in step 2 and for reason not known to me also clears the persistent reservation from the Tegile as well.
