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For reasons too embarrassing and frustrating to blather about, I am the proud owner of a Dell MD1200 enclosure and 12 ST4000NM0014 4TB Seagate drives (short story: I thought they were ST4000NM0023's).

The drives show as 475Gb units with both the Dell PERC 810 and LSI 9280-8e RAID controllers that I've tried. Can I use my 12Gbps drives on my 6Gbps MD1200 or is this simply not going to work?

Under the PERC 810, the drives show up as 475G on the BIOS screen, so I'm sure it's not an O/S problem (happens to be CentOS 7.2, but again that's not in play here).

Right now, I'd kind of like to try to get the 9280-8e to work (as opposed to a PERC controller) because its the more generic... the Dell, I'm guessing, is fussier...

Here's what my RAID controller looks like. At this point I don't know if a firmware upgrade will help me...

Product Name    : LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e
Serial No       : SV12705912
FW Package Build: 12.13.0-0154

                    Mfg. Data
                ================
Mfg. Date       : 06/30/11
Rework Date     : 00/00/00
Revision No     : 56A
Battery FRU     : N/A

                Image Versions in Flash:
                ================
FW Version         : 2.130.383-2315
BIOS Version       : 3.27.00_4.12.05.00_0x05270000
Preboot CLI Version: 04.04-020:#%00009
WebBIOS Version    : 6.0-51-e_47-Rel
NVDATA Version     : 2.09.03-0045
Boot Block Version : 2.02.00.00-0000
BOOT Version       : 09.250.01.219

Update: BIOS is the latest, 2.5.4. MD1200 Firmware is the latest 1.06. Again, my 9280-8e has a firmware version that's higher than the one currently offered by Broadcom, it appears. I don't know why.

No change in the behavior. I have not gone into the O/S because this problem appears with the PERC and the LSI RAID BIOS software, pre-boot... it's not an OS driver issue.

Mike S
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  • BTW, firmware from Broadcom's website (https://www.broadcom.com/support/knowledgebase/1211161492880/megaraid-sas-9280-4i4e---9280de-8e---9280-8e---9280-16i4e---9280 ) is at release 12.9.0. My card has 12.13.0... odd. – Mike S Apr 25 '17 at 21:30

3 Answers3

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Drives with a 4K native sector size aren't supported by the MD1200.

http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/common/md1200_md1220_supportmatrix_en-us.pdf

  • Drives with 12 Gbps interface speed will down-train to 6 Gbps when installed in the enclosure. The following are not supported on MD1200/MD1220 enclosures:
    • 4Kn sector size

The ST4000NM0023 drives (Dell P/N 529FG) should work as expected, so if you can return or repurpose the ST4000NM0014 drives that would be a good place to start.

oeste
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  • The 23-suffix drives have 512 bytes per sector: http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/constellation-fam/constellation-es/constellation-es-3/en-us/docs/constellation-es-3-data-sheet-ds1769-1-1210us.pdf . The 14 suffix drives are formatted to 512 bytes if they're OEM, but I assume mine are 4K sectors (they are Seagate-branded, not OEM): http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/enterprise-hdd-fam/enterprise-capacity-3-5-hdd/constellation-es-4/en-us/docs/100726011f.pdf . Thanks, you hit the nail on the head... the 12G vs. 6G was a red herring which I didn't realize. – Mike S Apr 26 '17 at 13:40
  • BTW, "red herring which I didn't realize" has been brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. Thank you, and have a nice day. – Mike S Apr 26 '17 at 15:31
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SAS is backward compatible...

Your 12G drives will downshift to 6G speed.

That is all.

But you're describing a different problem... and that's the displayed capacity of the disks.

You should upgrade firmware on all controllers and components.

ewwhite
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  • ...So, where did my 3.6T (per drive) go? And I should mention, the ST4000NM0023's showed up just fine in the Dell BIOS utility and using MegaCLI. – Mike S Apr 25 '17 at 21:28
  • +1 on ewwhite's comment - You need to get the PERC firmware updated to the latest release, plus the server's BIOS / LCC. – JimNim Apr 25 '17 at 21:32
  • I'm not using PERC. Not now, anyway. My firmware on the 9280-8e is more recent than what's available on Broadcom's website...? Odd.. well the version number is higher. I just updated my server to the latest Dell BIOS, 2.5.4. No joy. I would expect the downshift in speed, no question, which is why I'm in this pickle (didn't return the drives). ...Anything that can explain the tiny displayed capacity, which is exactly my issue? The one variable between drive types is the interface speed. Capacity, buffer size, rpms... all else is the same. – Mike S Apr 25 '17 at 22:11
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I'm just guessing here but the drives you have are the 4k sector drives correct? The drives you need are the 512b sector size drives.

512b is x8 times smaller than 4k and the size you are seeing in BIOS is ~x8 times smaller than the actual drive size. It sounds like BIOS is calculating the drive size based off of only seeeing the first 512b of every 4k sector on the drive

Todd Porter
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