[TriLUG] 512/4096B cluster size incompatibilities

[Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG]

On Sat, 5 Jan 2019, David Burton wrote:

> 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.

yes

:-(

> 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.

I bought my first Vantec external usb enclosure from Intrex when they first came 
out (10-15yrs ago). I assumed because Intrex doesn't want returns, it was the 
best there was around. I've probably bought 20 of them since then. I could never 
do smartctl through them. Smartctl said that it didn't recognise the chip 
listening at the other end of the usb cable. Being used to hardware 
incompatibility problems with linux, I just assumed that was the way it was.

I would take the disks out every now and again and check them with smartctl by 
putting them inside a desktop. This was a bit of a pain, but I accepted it as 
the best that was available.

I have just bought the latest single slot drive from Vantec and it has the same 
problem, giving the wrong firmware version and logical/physical cluster size.

I assume the problem is of long standing and would have been obvious with only 
cursory testing.

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

I'm not hopeful. They've been doing this for a while.

> 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.

This sounds like Charlie Brown and the football. I'll give it a go though.

Thanks

Joe
--
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant 
map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml 
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!