[TriLUG] 512/4096B cluster size incompatibilities

[David Burton via TriLUG]

It definitely surprised me, too, Joe!  It's a weird one.

It is understandable that you missed it. We tend to see what we expect to
see, which is why it's so hard to proofread your own writing.

I wonder whether it is a defect in this particular unit, or in all
the Vantec enclosures of this model? Perhaps they never tested with 4TB
drives in both slots.

You could ask them about it. They're apparently a U.S. company:
http://www.vantecusa.com/

If I was an engineer at Vantec I'd want to know about this (and I'd want to
make it right), and I'd be grateful for being told about it.

Dave


On Sat, Jan 5, 2019 at 1:53 PM Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 1 Jan 2019, David Burton wrote:
>
...

> > *No!  The problem is with the external enclosure slot.  The drives are
> both
> > fine!*
>
> Well thank you David,
>
> ...

> In one of the usb/eSATA external slots (same result whether connecting
> through
> usb or eSATA), either drive is seen as
>
> o 512/512 logical/physical
>
> o firmware version 0958
>
> o is not properly detected by smartctl
>
> o fdisk partitions it as 512B sectors
>
>
>
> In the other slot in the dual slot external usb enclosure and in the eSATA
> single slot external enclosure, either drive is
>
> o 512/4096 logical/physical
>
> o firmware version CC26
>
> o properly detected by smartcle
>
> o fdisk partitions it as 4096B sectors
>
> So it is the enclosure. David picked that I didn't do the swap right.
> Thanks
> for your diligence there David.
>
> I'm now surprised that Vantec, the enclosure manufacturer hasn't noticed
> this.
> They've been producing external drives for at least a decade.
>
...