Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

Alex Daniloff

21 Sep 2003 21 Sep '03

20:50

Hello SuSE folkz, I've just installed a couple of WDE9150 Western Digital SCSI hard drives to build RAID5. To my suprise, each of these drives shows 2048GB of its capacity instead of real 9.1GB. Just for the sake of sanity I tried to install SuSE8.2 Linux on one of these drives. Installation failed with warnings related to some IO problems. Could somebody tell me please if I have to perform low level formatting of these SCSI drives before building RAID5, or these drives just defective and I'll have exchange them and bit crap out of vendor. Thank you very much in advance for any help or source of information.

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Andreas Winkelmann

21 Sep 21 Sep

21:10

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

Alex Daniloff wrote:

...

I've just installed a couple of WDE9150 Western Digital SCSI hard drives to build RAID5. To my suprise, each of these drives shows 2048GB of its capacity instead of real 9.1GB. Just for the sake of sanity I tried to install SuSE8.2 Linux on one of these drives. Installation failed with warnings related to some IO problems. Could somebody tell me please if I have to perform low level formatting of these SCSI drives before building RAID5, or these drives just defective and I'll have exchange them and bit crap out of vendor. Thank you very much in advance for any help or source of information.

I want such drives, too. 2 TB wow ;-) Hmm, it seems that your scsi-bus has problems. If all drives have such size, check termination, cable-length... Maybe bios-settings. Most controllers have a scsi-bios with possibillitie to configure some bus-parameters. -- Andreas

Jack Alderson

22 Sep 22 Sep

17:22

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

On Sunday 21 September 2003 15:50, Alex Daniloff wrote:

...

Hello SuSE folkz, I've just installed a couple of WDE9150 Western Digital SCSI hard drives to build RAID5. To my suprise, each of these drives shows 2048GB of its capacity instead of real 9.1GB. Just for the sake of sanity I tried to install SuSE8.2 Linux on one of these drives. Installation failed with warnings related to some IO problems. Could somebody tell me please if I have to perform low level formatting of these SCSI drives before building RAID5, or these drives just defective and I'll have exchange them and bit crap out of vendor. Thank you very much in advance for any help or source of information.

Hello Alex, You didn't mention the manufacture of your SCSI controller. Different manufactures use different ways to right data to the HD and have limited compatibility with each other. If your SCSI controller uses a non-Adaptec standard, or has not been low level formatted then you could encounter problems like you described. I have also had SCSI drives that need the wide-negotiation and/or disable-disconnect turned off to properly see the size of the drive before it's formatted. You should be able to use the utilities in your SCSI BIOS to test the drive and do a low-level format. Your RAID controller may also be causing what you're seeing. If you are using software RAID then that can also add some complications to the setup. My personal experience with Western Digital HDs is that they are unreliable and prone to configuration problems. I consider them, at best, a hobbiest HD. Here is some reference information on some HDs I use for work and home in order of my preference... 1. Seagate Some drives certified by Sun to use in Enterprise servers. 2. Quantum Now owned by Maxtor. Both IDE and SCSI drives very good. 3. IBM Old drives manufactured by IBM were good. New drives made by Hitachi. I have no experience with the latter. Western Digital Doesn't even deserve a rating. 6 drives with 5 failures in 3 years. Summary: Manufacture OS Size/speed Type Time in service QOS 1. Seagate Solaris 2.6 18G 10k rpm SCSI 3 yrs 24/7/365 0 failures Seagate Win98 80G 7200 rpm IDE 6 months 0 failures 2. Quantum Linux 7.0/8.2 20G 7200 rpm IDE 3 yrs 24/7/365 0 failures Quantum Linux 7.0/8.2 30G 7200 rpm IDE 3 yrs 24/7/365 0 failures Quantum Linux 8.2 30G 7200 rpm IDE 6 months 24/7/365 0 failures Quantum Linux 7.0 18G 7200 rpm SCSI 4 yrs home use 0 failures 3. IBM Linux Win NT 4.0 OS/2 DOS 18G 10K rpm SCSI 4 yrs home use 0 failures I hope you get some useful info from this. Jack A.

Felix Miata

18:28

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

Jack Alderson wrote:

...

My personal experience with Western Digital HDs is that they are unreliable and prone to configuration problems. I consider them, at best, a hobbiest HD.

They're the winmodem of hard drives, designed for M$ windoze. WD provides M$ (and Sun) with drivers to do the work of the missing drive hardware. Note that WD calls their drives "EIDE", while everyone else is committed to the ATA standards. -- "...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...." James 1:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

Jack Alderson

18:51

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

On Monday 22 September 2003 13:28, Felix Miata wrote:

...

Jack Alderson wrote:

...
My personal experience with Western Digital HDs is that they are unreliable and prone to configuration problems. I consider them, at best, a hobbiest HD.

They're the winmodem of hard drives, designed for M$ windoze. WD provides M$ (and Sun) with drivers to do the work of the missing drive hardware. Note that WD calls their drives "EIDE", while everyone else is committed to the ATA standards. -- "...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...." James 1:19 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

Felix, It wouldn't suprise me at all that they do that. There was a programmer a couple years ago that was developing hard drive utility software that would do low-level work on the drive's sectors/clusters ect.. . He posted a notice that WD HDs had some flaws in their BIOS routines and firmware that caused read/write errors and other incompatablities. WD claim the problems have been fixed but I have my doubts. Some of the problems may have resulted due to the items you mentioned. At any rate, WD drives for are banned from use in my systems. Jack A.

Felix Miata

19:29

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

Jack Alderson wrote:

...

On Monday 22 September 2003 13:28, Felix Miata wrote:

...

...
They're the winmodem of hard drives, designed for M$ windoze. WD provides M$ (and Sun) with drivers to do the work of the missing drive hardware. Note that WD calls their drives "EIDE", while everyone else is

...

...
committed to the ATA standards.

...

It wouldn't suprise me at all that they do that.

That WD does it has been admitted and documented. I just can't tell you how and where, though it has been brought up repeatedly on at least one of the Mandrake Linux mailing lists. -- "...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...." James 1:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

Carl William Spitzer IV

22:57

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

So far so good with my WD and that on the recommendation of the LUG. I have avoided the IBM/hitachi 7200 series on the same recommendation. Perhaps its just a WD SCSI problem my drives are IDE and not a problem. CWSIV On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:28:21 -0400 Felix Miata writes:

...

Jack Alderson wrote:

...
My personal experience with Western Digital HDs is that they are unreliable and prone to configuration problems. I consider them, at best, a hobbiest HD.

They're the winmodem of hard drives, designed for M$ windoze. WD provides M$ (and Sun) with drivers to do the work of the missing drive hardware. Note that WD calls their drives "EIDE", while everyone else is committed to the ATA standards. -- "...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...." James 1:19 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

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Jack Alderson

24 Sep 24 Sep

15:18

New subject: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?

On Monday 22 September 2003 17:57, Carl William Spitzer IV wrote:

...

So far so good with my WD and that on the recommendation of the LUG. I have avoided the IBM/hitachi 7200 series on the same recommendation.

Perhaps its just a WD SCSI problem my drives are IDE and not a problem.

CWSIV

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:28:21 -0400 Felix Miata writes:

...
Jack Alderson wrote:

...
My personal experience with Western Digital HDs is that they are

unreliable

...
and prone to configuration problems. I consider them, at best, a

hobbiest HD.

They're the winmodem of hard drives, designed for M$ windoze. WD provides M$ (and Sun) with drivers to do the work of the missing drive hardware. Note that WD calls their drives "EIDE", while everyone else is committed to the ATA standards. -- "...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...." James 1:19 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

The WD drives I used were IDE. Given the problems I've had with their IDE drives and the "extra" difficulty sometimes associated with setting up SCSI drives, I would not even consider purchasing a WD SCSI HD. Good luck with your system. Jack A.

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participants (5)

Alex Daniloff
Andreas Winkelmann
Carl William Spitzer IV
Felix Miata
Jack Alderson