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I have a hardware RAID 1+0 based on external CFI-B8253JDGG DAS. It was connected to PC with eSATA and contains 4x1TB HDD (Total capacity is 1.82TB in RAID10). Some days ago I tried to connect the DAS to another PC but something went wrong... My RAID in Windows7 looked like single partition with capacity 931.51Gb RAW. (Later I realized that the problem was in Gigabyte motherboard, AHCI/IDE settings and maybe in hands.so). I spent some time and used a lot of programs trying to recover data from RAID and separated drives reassembled to virtual RAID (all operations as readonly). So I can see full directory tree but the most part of the files is unreadable.

One interesting thing I found (/dev/sdc is my RAID10):

$ sudo hdparm -N /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 max sectors   = 1953403071/3906863104, HPA is enabled

but if I try to set max HPA to "default" or disable

$ sudo hdparm -N 3906863104 /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 setting max visible sectors to 3906863104 (temporary)
 SET_MAX_ADDRESS failed: Input/output error
 max sectors   = 1953403071/3906863104, HPA is enabled

Other programs for changing HPA parameters like Victoria, HDD Capacity Restore Tool have no success.

I tested the same thing with another single 1TB drive:

  • connected to new PC
  • have a 32MB RAW patrition
  • hdparm -N XXXXXXXXXX /dev/sdX
  • successfully mounted partition with all data

Any ideas for changing HPA to "default"/"factory" for this RAID10?

UPD:

# hdparm -K 1 /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 setting drive keep features to 1 (on)
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error


# hdparm -Np3906863104 /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 setting max visible sectors to 3906863104 (permanent)
 SET_MAX_ADDRESS failed: Input/output error
 max sectors   = 1953403071/3906863104, HPA is enabled

I tried to use hdparm and other programs like HDAT2, Victoria 3.52, DiskCheckup.

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  • 1) Can you verify that the new/current config is still set to RAID10? If it is seeing one drive rather then an array (or a 4drive RAID1E) then the size is already at max. 2) Are the drives identical? If not setting them to identical size (with a bit space to spare in case a replacement drive is smaller) is a good thing. 3) Why not recreate? Wipe. Create new array. Restore from backup. That might take a few hours over SATA but you easily lost those hours already by trying to get it to work.
    – Hennes
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 12:57
  • 1) This Direct Attached Storage configures with DIP-switches at back panel. Yes, it is set to RAID10
    – Broken047
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 13:44
  • 2) Yes, all drives are identical, all drives (separately) shows identical block numbers and sizes; 3) Of course, all data was restored from backups, but it is too easy to wipe ^_^ I want to solve this problem anyway.
    – Broken047
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 13:53
  • What happens if you use either hdparm -Np3906863104 --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing /dev/sdc (HPA on, but max sectors visible) or when you try to retain hdparm settings after a [software] reset with hdparm -K 1 /dev/sdc ?
    – Hennes
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 23:27
  • Answered in the first post. (UPD:)
    – Broken047
    Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 5:46

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Answer from CFI Group technical support.

Unfortunately, this is limitation of RAID controller. You can not change HPA parameters. To solve the problem, you need to re-create the array, but all data will be lost.

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  • +1 just for posting an answer. (too many people sadly do not).
    – Hennes
    Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 14:50

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