I currently have 20 Hitachi disks of model DKR1C-J72FC or DK31CJ-72FC
(depending on who you ask and where you look).  These are formatted
with a 520 byte sector which is not compatible with any modern OS that
I'm willing to use.  Low-level formatting these drives doesn't do any
good since the firmware doesn't recognize the mode page switch to 512
byte sectors.

What I have heard though is that this is possible with a little utility
called code updated contained within the IBM HGST tools.  Unfortunately
this util seems to have dropped off the face of the earth along with
all of IBM's data on these drives.  I'm wondering if someone could help
me out with finding these tools as well as a generic firmware for these
drives.  It has been mentioned that it is floating around somewhere as
well, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

I guess if this doesn't work then I'm gonna start digging into the
linux kernel to shoehorn 520 byte sectors in...

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On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Nathan wrote:

> What I have heard though is that this is possible with a little utility
> called code updated contained within the IBM HGST tools.  Unfortunately
> this util seems to have dropped off the face of the earth along with
> all of IBM's data on these drives.  I'm wondering if someone could help
> me out with finding these tools as well as a generic firmware for these
> drives.  It has been mentioned that it is floating around somewhere as
> well, but I'll be damned if I can find it.
>

I had good luck using the AIX 'diag' utility to reformat IBM drives from
520 to 512 in cases where normal mode page tricks did not work.

Not sure you would even need the generic firmware then.

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P. Thompson wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Nathan wrote:
> 
>
> I had good luck using the AIX 'diag' utility to reformat IBM drives from
> 520 to 512 in cases where normal mode page tricks did not work.
>
> Not sure you would even need the generic firmware then.

So I've got Code Update up and going as well as some generic scsi utils
on linux.  At this point I'm at a loss for what needs to be done to get
the drives to accept the new sector size.  Tweaking the sector size
mode page isn't working, write and read caches have no effect, I'm at a
loss.  Is there anything specific you are doing with the 'diag' util
that I can attempt?  The internet seems to be rather lacking in
information on the subject.

Unfortunately I'm lacking in an AIX box to use diag on directly.  I'm
not sure this project is going to be worth buying an AIX box for
either....

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In article <1160940343.806983.54240@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>,
Nathan <nlgordon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>So I've got Code Update up and going as well as some generic scsi utils
>on linux.  At this point I'm at a loss for what needs to be done to get
>the drives to accept the new sector size.  Tweaking the sector size
>mode page isn't working,

You understand that immediately after changing the sector size, you have
to reformat using current parameters, right?

--
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                     tls@rek.tjls.com

"We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral
aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others."      - H.L.A. Hart

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:[vbcol=seagreen]
> In article <1160940343.806983.54240@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>,
> Nathan <nlgordon@gmail.com> wrote: 
>
> You understand that immediately after changing the sector size, you have
> to reformat using current parameters, right?
>
> --
>   Thor Lancelot Simon	                                     tls@rek.tjls.co
m
>
>   "We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single mora
l
>    aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others."      - H.L.A. Hart[/vbc
ol]

Yes I do realize that.  The drive still reports that the sector size is
520 bytes even after setting it to 512.  Formatting in this state
doesn't do anything either...

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <1160960732.742228.153150@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>,
Nathan <nlgordon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: 
>
>Yes I do realize that.  The drive still reports that the sector size is
>520 bytes even after setting it to 512.  Formatting in this state
>doesn't do anything either...

Many drives require that the FORMAT be the _next_ SCSI command after
the mode page set.  If you're asking the drive what its sector size is,
you may be causing yourself a problem right there.

This may or may not be the problem, but the documentation for many drives
(including all the IBM ones I ever bothered to look up) is quite explicit
about what you've got to do to change the sector size: two commands, the
set and the format, with nothing in between.  Some drives may let you get
away with more, but I wouldn't expect it to always work, either.

--
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                     tls@rek.tjls.com

"We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral
aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others."      - H.L.A. Hart

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Well I would like to thank everyone who either replied or even just
looked.  I got the sg_format util from sg3_utils working on those
drives, unfortunately it looks like everyone of the drives is toast....
two of them took to partitioning...  I'm gonna poke at some other
stuff, but it looks like I got screwed...  In any case, for those
people trying to do something like this in the future sg_format has a
handy little option called '--size' which can properly change the
sector size on these drives.

On Oct 12, 1:29 pm, "Nathan" <nlgor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I currently have 20 Hitachi disks of model DKR1C-J72FC or DK31CJ-72FC
> (depending on who you ask and where you look).  These are formatted
> with a 520 byte sector which is not compatible with any modern OS that
> I'm willing to use.  Low-level formatting these drives doesn't do any
> good since the firmware doesn't recognize the mode page switch to 512
> byte sectors.
>
> What I have heard though is that this is possible with a little utility
> called code updated contained within the IBM HGST tools.  Unfortunately
> this util seems to have dropped off the face of the earth along with
> all of IBM's data on these drives.  I'm wondering if someone could help
> me out with finding these tools as well as a generic firmware for these
> drives.  It has been mentioned that it is floating around somewhere as
> well, but I'll be damned if I can find it.
>
> I guess if this doesn't work then I'm gonna start digging into the
> linux kernel to shoehorn 520 byte sectors in...

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]