[rescue] swap 36 gb SCA drive for 72 gb SCA

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

Hitachi 72gb SCA drive issues?  Here's a thought: pop it into another
machine and check the block size.

I found a batch of Hitachi 72gb DK-somethings on Ebay several years ago
that were unexpectedly affordable, but none of them seemed to work (Sun
E3500, to be a ZFS testbed).  Then I noticed the block size was wrong --
the firmware hinted that they'd been pulled from an EMC and had 520-byte
blocks, which the Sun couldn't grok.  It's been ten years or so since this
all went down, so I can't recall the details, but I think I put them in a
spare NetApp shelf I happened to have laying around, wrote the latest
NetApp-supplied firmware on 'em, then reformatted the lot with 512-byte
blocks.  The Suns were happy with 'em after that.  (NetApp used to use 520
byte "block checksum" format and had no trouble seeing them, and I was
pleased to use a NetApp to blow away the EMC firmware. Feh!)

That seems like a lot of work, now.  And you might not have a spare NetApp
around. But maybe a modern-ish PC with a SCSI card and a half-decent BIOS
utility?  It's a theory, anyway. :-)

Cheers,
-- Chris

(I happen to have a pile of old 36gb SCA type drives on an old F720 I'll
eventually part with, but they all have something like *14 years of uptime*
on 'em... and 520-byte blocks!)