Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3470 mails)
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Re: [SLE] Strange hard drive capacity 2048GB !?
- From: Jack Alderson <jack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 12:22:48 -0500
- Message-id: <200309221222.48973.jack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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.
> 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.
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