[SOLVED] I can't seem to format my 16TB HDD?

[ajaz1986]

I bought 4x Western Digital Elements Desktop 16TB Hub Drives ( WDBWLG0160HBK-EESN ) I removed the HDDs from the hub and I've added them to my 4x HP Blade Servers (1 drive in each server). I went into the boot setup (F10 - Intelligent Provisioning) and configured them as a RAID 0. I then booted into my Linux Desktop 20.04.3 LTS environment and proceeded to the Disk Utility app to add the drive. I can see the 16TB drives are there but I can't do anything with them.

It shows 16TB drive for each of them, with 16TB free unallocated space but when I try to add a partition, I get the following error:
Error creating partition on /dev/sdk: Failed to read partition table on device '/dev/sdk' (Invalid argument during seek for read on /dev/sdk) (udisks-error-quark, 0)

Any ideas why this might be happening?
It's definitely not a faulty drive as I've got 4 of them and all 4 are displaying the same error.

 

[USAFRet]

Did you finish the RAID 0 configuration?

That should show as a single 64TB volume.


But I gotta ask.,...what will this be used for?

 

[ajaz1986]

Did you finish the RAID 0 configuration?

That should show as a single 64TB volume.


But I gotta ask.,...what will this be used for?

Sorry I forgot to say, I've spread them across 4 different blade servers, so only 1 in each server. They show up as full 16TB drives in each server and the RAID 0 did complete with no errors.

I want to put some Chia plots on them, I got the drives at a decent price and since I've already got the servers, there's no other cost but the drives.

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 0 spread across multiple blades?
Well, thats out of my wheelhouse.

Sorry.

 

[ajaz1986]

RAID 0 spread across multiple blades?
Well, thats out of my wheelhouse.

Sorry.

No, they were RAIDED individually. So I went into blade 1 config, did RAID 0 on the 16TB drive... then rebooted that blade and proceeded to blade 2 and repeated all the way through to blade 4.

 

[USAFRet]

No, they were RAIDED individually. So I went into blade 1 config, did RAID 0 on the 16TB drive... then rebooted that blade and proceeded to blade 2 and repeated all the way through to blade 4.

You can't config a RAID 0 with a single drive.

 

[ajaz1986]

You can't config a RAID 0 with a single drive.

Ooh that's where I've gone wrong then.. it makes sense that it shouldn't be possible but the option was there so I assumed it was fine since it completed with no errors lol!

 

[USAFRet]

Ooh that's where I've gone wrong then.. it makes sense that it shouldn't be possible but the option was there so I assumed it was fine since it completed with no errors lol!

And you can't do a RAID 0 across multiple servers.
How would they be connected?

Absolutely not going to work, no matter what magic dust you sprinkle on it.

 

[ajaz1986]

And you can't do a RAID 0 across multiple servers.
How would they be connected?

Absolutely not going to work, no matter what magic dust you sprinkle on it.

No, I wasn't trying to RAID across multiple servers... each server has it's own pool of drives. They've all got 14TB drives in them which are all full... so I got 4x 16TB drives and decided to put 1 in each server but had to configure a new array with RAID 0 for each of them.

Tomorrow, I'll remove them and install all 4 into a single server and then RAID 0 all 4 drives together. That should solve the issue. Thanks for the fast response

 

[popatim]

On older Raid controllers, as single drive would typically be set as a raid1 (mirrored) and typically not have the mirror drive installed. Most newer raid controllers have a single driveor pass-thru option to leave the drive out of a raid array.

 

[ajaz1986]

On older Raid controllers, as single drive would typically be set as a raid1 (mirrored) and typically not have the mirror drive installed. Most newer raid controllers have a single driveor pass-thru option to leave the drive out of a raid array.

Interesting you say this, I installed a single 10Tb drive few months back and that worked fine - I just can’t remember how I configured the array options. I’ll log into the servers tomorrow and check it out. For now, I’ve put 2x16TB drives in one server and 2 in another…. Will login tonight and go through the configs

 

[maikutech]

On older Raid controllers, as single drive would typically be set as a raid1 (mirrored) and typically not have the mirror drive installed. Most newer raid controllers have a single driveor pass-thru option to leave the drive out of a raid array.

I think raid 3 would do him much better for 4 hdd's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

 

[USAFRet]

I think raid 3 would do him much better for 4 hdd's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

No, the proper configuration would be RAID NONE.

 

[popatim]

I think raid 3 would do him much better for 4 hdd's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

While he had 4 drives, they were not in the same PC so anything beyond a single drive configuration was not happening.

 

[maikutech]

While he had 4 drives, they were not in the same PC so anything beyond a single drive configuration was not happening.

Okay so if he doesn't have all 4 hard drives in the same PC how many does he have total in it right now ? that's what everyone is trying to figure out but we keep getting mix answers here so....?

 

[alceryes]

Just a note. Some older RAID controllers list a set up where only one drive is detected as RAID 0 by default.
Totally wrong and confusing...? Yes, but they did it anyway.
Many newer controller's now use JBOD instead.