Would non-Netapp firmware do the trick? WD1002FBYS-05A6B0

[thesodamonster]

Hello,

I have some Netapp drives (NA P/N X302A-R5) which I'm trying to reformat to 512 byte sectors. I've done this in the past using Linux's SG utils with some Netapp FCAL and SAS drives but these SATA drives are giving me sense code errors. It doesn't matter if I connect it using a USB SATA adapter, onboard SATA or an SAS HBA. Some poking around for answers seemed to imply that it might be related to the Netapp related firmware on the drives not allowing the change to 512 byte sectors and that using a standard Western Digital firmware might solve the issue. I can't seem to find any solid evidence to support this. Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences to share? There isn't any data on the drives that I need to save so I can try things without worries of data loss.

Netapp P/N: X302A-R5
S/N: WMATV6751113 1.0TB
MDL: WD1002FBYS-05A6B0
DCM: HBRNNT2AA
DCX: 5001A6861

If this is a firmware related issue does anyone have non-netapp firmware for this drive? I see references to a lot of variations to WD1002FBYS like WD1002FBYS-02A6B0 or WD1002FBYS-704AB0. Are the same files compatible across the board or are the files very model specific?

Thanks in advance.

[Doomer]

I know that Netapp uses 520 bytes per sector and it won't work with 512 bytes drives.
SATA drives in general do not support changing sector size, so you can't change it by simply reformatting the drive, like you could do with SAS or FCAL drives.

I don't know if you would be able to change FW on this drive, or even if you could that it would work after that

[scratchy]

I have seen SATA drives that use a logical 520. They were formatted to 512 but had data written 512/8 data/metadata. Not seen any SATA with hard 520. What about writing tracks from SATA version then running trex

[scratchy]

My thoughts on this are that the problem is os based, eg Linux and windows. What does sg_sat_identify /dev/sdx give in terminal (x=device)

[thesodamonster]

I initially had this all frankensteined on the table during my first go a this. I'll drag it out on the operating table again and report back. It will give me a chance to save the error output again since I seem to have lost the original terminal session output with things like the sense code errors.