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Format HDD without Navisphere
Hi All,
Recently I got an EMC Clariion FC4700 system with several HDD's in it. The system looks good and I was able to assing basic parameters to it like IP addresses for the SP's, RAID groups, etc. My only problem is that I don't have the management Laptop for the system which would contain the Navisphere Manager software and unfortunately I wasn't able to get a copy of the original Navisphere CD (if ever existed), so I can't access low level Clariion commands at this time.
Recently one of the hard disk drives was taken out and formatted directly under a Solaris host which cleared it out completely. Now when I put back the drive it is recognized by the Clariion box as Unformatted and I can't find a way to re-initialize it. While it's in an unformatted mode, I can't bind it to any RAID groups and therefore it is completely useless at this time.
If someone knows a way how to format a Clariion HDD without Navisphere or knows where can I get a spare copy of the management software (please don't post messages about contacting EMC), please let me know as soon as possible.
Thanks & regards.
Recently I got an EMC Clariion FC4700 system with several HDD's in it. The system looks good and I was able to assing basic parameters to it like IP addresses for the SP's, RAID groups, etc. My only problem is that I don't have the management Laptop for the system which would contain the Navisphere Manager software and unfortunately I wasn't able to get a copy of the original Navisphere CD (if ever existed), so I can't access low level Clariion commands at this time.
Recently one of the hard disk drives was taken out and formatted directly under a Solaris host which cleared it out completely. Now when I put back the drive it is recognized by the Clariion box as Unformatted and I can't find a way to re-initialize it. While it's in an unformatted mode, I can't bind it to any RAID groups and therefore it is completely useless at this time.
If someone knows a way how to format a Clariion HDD without Navisphere or knows where can I get a spare copy of the management software (please don't post messages about contacting EMC), please let me know as soon as possible.
Thanks & regards.
ASKER
Thanks for the quick answer. Unfortunately to be able geting Navisphere from PowerLink your account need to be registerred for support and mine is not. On the other hand as you know this is a very old device and most probably even EMC won't provide propper support so PowerLink is not an option at all.
I heard some stories where people managed to reformat their drives via engeneering mode, but as far as I know the off-array management software is required for this task (correct me if I'm wrong). I already tried to google for the Navisphere management components but it doesn't seem anyone is having them hosted for public, so if anyone could provide them, please let me know the soonest.
By the way thanks for the advice on the CX300 vs. FC4700. Now the good thing is that the FC4700 is still in my hands but as a test equipment and without any responsibility around damaging it ;). The bad thing is that I can't get a CX300, so I will stick with the older device for a while. It's good to know though that I shouldn't mess with the HDD's on standalone machines. Most probably there would be a way to change back the 520 sector info via low level SCSI utility like SCU and I guess I can use information from another yet untouched drive as a comparison basis.
Anyway still the question is:
If anyone knows a good way for setting an unformated drive as uable either by EMC's undocumented / non-public features or another way, please let us all know.
Cheers
I heard some stories where people managed to reformat their drives via engeneering mode, but as far as I know the off-array management software is required for this task (correct me if I'm wrong). I already tried to google for the Navisphere management components but it doesn't seem anyone is having them hosted for public, so if anyone could provide them, please let me know the soonest.
By the way thanks for the advice on the CX300 vs. FC4700. Now the good thing is that the FC4700 is still in my hands but as a test equipment and without any responsibility around damaging it ;). The bad thing is that I can't get a CX300, so I will stick with the older device for a while. It's good to know though that I shouldn't mess with the HDD's on standalone machines. Most probably there would be a way to change back the 520 sector info via low level SCSI utility like SCU and I guess I can use information from another yet untouched drive as a comparison basis.
Anyway still the question is:
If anyone knows a good way for setting an unformated drive as uable either by EMC's undocumented / non-public features or another way, please let us all know.
Cheers
>I heard some stories where people managed to reformat their drives via engeneering mode
No - unfortunately, that's simply not possible. I saw some discussion a few years ago about reformatting 520 bytes/sector drives back to 512 bytes/sector and that's relatively easily done, but reformatting to 520 bytes/sector and rewriting the CRC and time stamp structures in the additional 8 bytes/sector is another matter entirely. Sorry to say, that drive is now a Solaris drive or a paper-weight. It's time as a CLARiiON drive is over, I'm afraid.
You're right about the supportability of the FC4700 - I had a pretty good look at the partner web site and I couldn't find the off-array UIs for FLARE that old, but the latest R26 or R28 off-array software may work - you'd have to test it and see. Years ago, I set up R16 (I think) off-array software to manage an FC5700 and it worked, so it's worth trying the latest releases.
You may get lucky on one of the scary crack sites. I'm not brave enough (my AV and browser squeals at me) to go look myself. :-)
No - unfortunately, that's simply not possible. I saw some discussion a few years ago about reformatting 520 bytes/sector drives back to 512 bytes/sector and that's relatively easily done, but reformatting to 520 bytes/sector and rewriting the CRC and time stamp structures in the additional 8 bytes/sector is another matter entirely. Sorry to say, that drive is now a Solaris drive or a paper-weight. It's time as a CLARiiON drive is over, I'm afraid.
You're right about the supportability of the FC4700 - I had a pretty good look at the partner web site and I couldn't find the off-array UIs for FLARE that old, but the latest R26 or R28 off-array software may work - you'd have to test it and see. Years ago, I set up R16 (I think) off-array software to manage an FC5700 and it worked, so it's worth trying the latest releases.
You may get lucky on one of the scary crack sites. I'm not brave enough (my AV and browser squeals at me) to go look myself. :-)
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ASKER
Most probably this can be achieved from within another OS too if you have the appropriate low-level SCSI tools, but one thing that I'm still curious is why EMC requires it's own firmware over the HDD's in any case.
Not sure how SCSI commands / calls are exactly treated between the storage box and the HDD's but as far as I know most SCSI drives simply wont allow the use of custom parameters like the 520 sector for example. I guess this is one reason why EMC firmware would be a must, but anyway I was thinking whether I can implement any of my other non-EMC firmwared FCAL drives into the FC4700 box or not.
Perhaps I can give this a try by modifying specific registers inside the HDD's firmware but this is a matter of whether I would be crazy enough to fry a 72GB FCAL beauty or just leave it as it is and hoping for some more EMC prepared HDD's :)
If anyone has experience with such approaches or is crazy enough to take part in one, send me a message. Not that I want to break all my stuff around but it's way too exciting to proof that you don't have to pay your vendor tech. support for silly things just because he is "forcing" you to do so.
No offense at all by the way :)
Cheers
Not sure how SCSI commands / calls are exactly treated between the storage box and the HDD's but as far as I know most SCSI drives simply wont allow the use of custom parameters like the 520 sector for example. I guess this is one reason why EMC firmware would be a must, but anyway I was thinking whether I can implement any of my other non-EMC firmwared FCAL drives into the FC4700 box or not.
Perhaps I can give this a try by modifying specific registers inside the HDD's firmware but this is a matter of whether I would be crazy enough to fry a 72GB FCAL beauty or just leave it as it is and hoping for some more EMC prepared HDD's :)
If anyone has experience with such approaches or is crazy enough to take part in one, send me a message. Not that I want to break all my stuff around but it's way too exciting to proof that you don't have to pay your vendor tech. support for silly things just because he is "forcing" you to do so.
No offense at all by the way :)
Cheers
Alternatively, google around for it. You may be lucky and find something on teh wayback machine (http://www.archive.org/).
If you've managed to overwrite the 520 bytes per sector formatting of the drive then that's that. It's now a paper-weight. You're best option is to purchase a new one from eBay. There is no way I know of to reformat the drive back to 520 bytes per sector outside the EMC factory. The additional 8 bytes are used for integrity tracking.
Quite frankly, I'd suggest you cut your losses with the FC4700 and purchase a second-hand CX300 - you'll be able to get drives for it and it is 2 hardware generations more modern (and more reliable). The FC4700 is out of support and dead and buried - that's why they're so cheap on eBay. Finally - be aware that a CX series CLARiiON without the first 5 OS drives is useless and worthless. You can also get both software and support for the CX series systems.