10TB ex-RAID drives only showing 1.1TiB capacity

Question

I build a new HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB drive into my machine. I have multible of these, and all show the same capacity (~1TB).

They were previously used in RAID setting where they showed correct sizes (10TB) but I planed to use just of of them as a HDD extension for my system.

Doing sudo lsblk I get:

sdd      8:48   0   1,1T  0 disk                                    │
└─sdd1   8:49   0   1,1T  0 part

so only 1.1TB of space.

Same happens when I do check it with GParted.

Any ideas why I dont get the full 10TB on all those drives?

Edit:

Output of `sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd`

Disk /dev/sdd: 1,1 TiB, 1204738326528 bytes, 2353004544 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 497F147C-3BC9-4F24-B2F1-7C0C1D8C30B8

Device     Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdd1   2048 2353002495 2353000448  1,1T Linux filesystem

Gparted Screenshot:

Gparted Screenshot (after deleting partition)

Motherboard and Controller

Ouput of dmesg | grep DMI:

[    0.000000] DMI: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7B48/Z370-A PRO (MS-7B48), BIOS 2.90 04/02/2019

Output of lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 3e92
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family USB 3.0 xHCI Controller
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH Thermal Subsystem
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH CSME HECI #1
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH SATA controller [AHCI mode]
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f0)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Z370 Chipset LPC/eSPI Controller
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family Power Management Controller
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH HD Audio
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family SMBus Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GV104 [GeForce GTX 1180] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 10f8 (rev a1)
01:00.2 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1ad8 (rev a1)
01:00.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1ad9 (rev a1)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

Welcome to SU. Do you mean gparted doesn't show the complete disk? Can you maybe post a screenshot of gparted together with `sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd` -output? — Peregrino69, Sep 29 '21 at 14:00
Thanks for the fast response! Screenshot and output is updated now! Maybe as an addition: what i tried is making a new partition table and formatting it to ext4. — some_name.py, Sep 29 '21 at 14:11
What is the brand and model of the HDD? You say you're seeing this on several drives, did you buy them all at the same time, from the same place? Have you checked for firmware updates for the drives? When they were RAID did they report the correct size? — music2myear, Sep 29 '21 at 14:13
Heh... music2myear was faster :-D Indeed the brand and the model of the HDDs would be helpful. — Peregrino69, Sep 29 '21 at 14:18
@music2myear Brand and model is HGST Ultrastar He10 . I don't know when they where bought but they worked correctly on that RAID system. — some_name.py, Sep 29 '21 at 14:18
Have you pulled a bunch of 1TB drives from a RAID array that was showing a total capacity of 10TB, and you're assuming each drive is therefore 10TB? What does the label on the disk show? — spikey_richie, Sep 29 '21 at 14:23
Yap, those be 10TB drives. Partitioning / formatting issue, methinks - seen the same moving USB drives between MacOS, Win and Linux. Trying to dig my addled brain to figure out how I fixed it... what happens if you try to delete the partition with fdisk? Do you know anything about the RAID system they were originally in? — Peregrino69, Sep 29 '21 at 14:25
I could just delete the partition with fdisk (I updated the screenshot above). No I don't know a lot about the RAID. — some_name.py, Sep 29 '21 at 14:35
I was suggesting fdisk as it has a nice way of informing "kernel will use old allocation tables until reboot" or something along those lines. Maybe that'll do it... won't hurt anyway... — Peregrino69, Sep 29 '21 at 14:42
Sometimes when I delete partitions with fdisk, it shows "cannot write changes, kernel will use etc." and the actual changes are seen only after system reboot. But I think DanielB:s answer makes it a moot point. — Peregrino69, Sep 29 '21 at 15:03
What is the make and model of the motherboard that the drive is connected to? That information would let us find out if it is likely to work with the full capacity of a 10 TB drive. — Andrew Morton, Sep 29 '21 at 15:22
@AndrewMorton I added the motherboard information and the controller information above. Also I just realized that I don't detect the drive at all (for instance with GParted) when I build it into my machine, but i detect it (ofc with ~1TB) when I plug it into a external USB housing. — some_name.py, Sep 29 '21 at 15:39
@some_name.py as I said, you need to buy a better external USB box with better controller — phuclv, Sep 30 '21 at 02:52
@phuclv ah ok I thought more on controller is something software related, many thanks for that tip! Could I ask how is it then that I don't see the drive at all when I connect it directly to the motherboard (which is quite modern)? — some_name.py, Sep 30 '21 at 09:28
@some_name.py in that case you need to show more information. Probably some misconfiguration in the UEFI I think — phuclv, Sep 30 '21 at 10:06
@phuclv Do you might have a staring point in mind what I could check? I checked both (Main-board and HDD drive) and they are both SATA III. Also I put it into another machine and made a new partition table and formatted the drive again. Still its not detected by the main board at all. What kind of setting in the BIOS could I also check? — some_name.py, Sep 30 '21 at 17:17
I don't know. It seems the drive's firmware is broken. There's no way a modern PC can't recognize a huge drive — phuclv, Oct 01 '21 at 00:01

Daniel B · Answer 1 · 2021-09-29T14:56:09.143

3

Sounds like whatever controller you’re using isn’t up to the task. With 512 byte LBAs and a 32-bit number of them, you can address at most ~2.2 TB.

As per the extended drive documentation, the real sector count is 19,532,873,728. Compared with what fdisk reports:

 32   28   24   20   16   12    8    4    0
  v    v    v    v    v    v    v    v    v
    1000 1100 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 = 2,353,004,544
100 1000 1100 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 = 19,532,873,728

Try with a better disk controller.

edited Sep 29 '21 at 14:56

answered Sep 29 '21 at 14:50

Daniel B

60,360
9
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I think you might've cracked the code. 2353002495 + 2048 = 2353004543. – Peregrino69 Sep 29 '21 at 14:55
They where previously used in a RAID setting and I just wanted to use it in my local machine. Is there still something like a disk controller for that? – some_name.py Sep 29 '21 at 15:02
@some_name.py yes, everything needs a controller in order to communicate with the device. Even memory has a controller. In the past it's very common for disks to work perfectly inside the case but then doesn't have the full capacity recognized when plugged into an external USB case, for example [this one](https://superuser.com/q/281108/241386) or [this one](https://superuser.com/q/622869/241386) – phuclv Sep 29 '21 at 15:09
@some_name.py - Your question makes no mention of that fact. – Ramhound Sep 29 '21 at 15:55
@Ramhound Yes your right I should made that point clearer and a bit of it got lost in the edits. – some_name.py Sep 29 '21 at 16:00