Solved: how to reformat 520 byte/sector to 512 byte/sector

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choodavid

how to reformat 520 byte/sector to 512 byte/sector

I have a bunch of Hitachi 147GB Fibre Channel FC-AL drives that came out of a Network Appliance DS14. These drives had NetApp firmware formatted to 520 bytes/sector (instead of the common 512). Windows XP's device manager recognizes the drives but Disk Management is unable to find them. these drives are connected together in a JMR Fortra 4-bay JBOD connected by copper fiber to a QLA2200 and running in a Windows XP box.

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nobus🇧🇪

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choodavid

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Thanks for the great suggestion. I have done that but without success. Downloaded the HiTest utility for HitachiPartners but it was not able to reset the factory-set firmware label (netapp) nor the 520 byte size sector.

Please refer to my post at qlogic ... for further details of troubleshooting

http://solutions.qlogic.com/KanisaSupportSite/dynamickc.do?externalId=Post-9590009&sliceId=Post-6618010&command=show&forward=threadedKC&kcId=Post-9590009

thanks!

nobus🇧🇪

here the sdormat tool for formatting scsi drives - don't know if it helps :
http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/sformat.html

nobus🇧🇪

pr this :
http://linux.die.net/man/8/sg_format

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Member_2_231077

I don't think you can do this, you need the firmware on the disk to accept the command to reformat to new geometry and it'll probably refuse to do it.

etaljic

It can't be done. You cannot change it to 512. The last 8 bits are used by Hitachi. Same thing goes for EMC storage arrays such as CLARiiONs.

choodavid

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Problems solved. Thanks you all.

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nobus🇧🇪

and what was the solution ?

choodavid

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Using Hitachi/IBM's HDD utility to reformat the FC drives to 512byte and thereafter Windows Disk Manager could recognize the drive as "basic" or "dynamic" for its NTFS formatting. The tools I used were Niagara and HiTest. Both were downloaded from Hitachi's website. You'll need to register though.

here's the link to a thread at qlogic for the details:
http://solutions.qlogic.com/KanisaSupportSite/dynamickc.do?externalId=Post-9590009&sliceId=Post-10992001&command=show&forward=threadedKC&kcId=Post-9590009

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Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.