Format unit failing with Format Unit Not Supported

[taylorjonl]

Problem

I am attempting to switch some Seagate ST12000NM0027 SAS drives from 512e to 4kn using this command:

openSeaChest_Format -d /dev/sg6 --formatUnit 4096 --fastFormat 1 --confirm <the long phrase>

This fails with this output:

Format Unit Not Supported or invalid option combination provided!

This is not making sense to me because I previously ran this command:

openSeaChest_Format -d /dev/sg6 --showSupportedFormats

And got this output (not all included):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Logical Block Size  PI-0  PI-1  PI-2  PI-3  Relative Performance  Metadata Size
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*               512     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
                520     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
                528     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
               4096     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
               4112     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
               4160     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After I try to format if I rerun the command to show supported formats it now shows this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Logical Block Size  PI-0  PI-1  PI-2  PI-3  Relative Performance  Metadata Size
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                512     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
                520     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
                528     Y     ?     ?     N                   N/A            N/A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because of this I have started a full format with this command:

openSeaChest_Format -d /dev/sg6 --formatUnit 4096 --fastFormat 0 --confirm

40 hours into this and we are only at 70% and I have 11 more disks to do. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

Expected behavior

The format command should complete in 4-5min and convert from 512e to 4kn sectors.

How to reproduce

Run this command:

openSeaChest_Format -d /dev/sg6 --formatUnit 4096 --fastFormat 1 --confirm <the long phrase>

Deployment information

SEAGATE ST12000NM0027
LSI SAS9200-8E
Dell MD1200

Additional information

No response

[vonericsen]

Hi @taylorjonl,

This is odd behavior. Can you provide some additional information for me? What is the firmware revision of these drives?
Also, can you run in verbose mode and share the output so I can review it? It seems like the drive is rejecting one of the commands for some reason, but I need to see the full reason it reports.
openSeaChest_Format -d <handle> --formatUnit 4096 --fastFormat 1 --confirm <confirmation> -v 4 > sasff.txt