1. The controller couldn't care less about make / model. There is NOTHING in the firmware that looks at that. If a disk isn't supported, it is going to be for other reasons.Either the firmware you refer to is different that the one I encountered or what I did was what you would call "unusual". I don't think it was. Here's what I did:
You replaced a WD RE4 (RAID Edition) with a WD Black.I replaced a WD5003ABYX with the same WD5003ABYX. I'm not aware that there are different models with the same model number. So I'm confused. It would be nice to know.
I purchased a new 500GB Western Digital hard drive model WD5003AZLX and used it to replace a failing WD5003ABYX 500GB HD. The system recognized it as an SSD and it was unusable in the RAID system.You said you used a WD5003AZLX (WD Black https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236345) to replace a failing WD5003ABYX (WD RE4 https://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Drive-Cache-WD5003ABYX-Model/dp/B003SALVN4), which you said didn't work. You said it worked to replace the RE4 with another RE4, which makes sense. The RE4 is not certified by Dell, but the older RE4's were validated by WD on Dell controllers. You said you didn't know why it didn't work ... now you do :)
I purchased a new 500GB Western Digital hard drive model WD5003ABYX with the model number matching what was being replaced. This worked.
I realize that this is empirical data and only a single data point. Yet, that's what happened.
Perhaps it would be good for others to know why? I sure don't.
1. The controller couldn't care less about make / model. There is NOTHING in the firmware that looks at that. If a disk isn't supported, it is going to be for other reasons.
2. The 48-bit LBA registry setting makes zero sense. The controller makes the logical volume emulate a SCSI drive. 48-bit LBA is applicable to the ATA/SATA instruction set, not the SCSI instruction set.
3. As i wrote before, the biggest incompatibility issue is if you try to use a disk with anything but 512 byte sector size; or if total # of sectors > 2^32 -1, or if doing something other than RAID1 and the total number of usable logical blocks is > 2^32 -1 .