topic Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive in General Discussion

Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

Harisheldon — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:09:38 GMT

Greetings All,

I have just assumed a new position in another organization, and it looks like they have not had a storage administrator for quite some time. After my initial review of their storage, I have found the following problem, and before I raise the red flag, I want to be sure that I can fix it.

A large majority of their hard drives, 1TB+ have a Effective Size of 20.5MB. This seems way out of proportion. Luckily, no data exist on these drives.

Therefore, and correct me if I am wrong, but to bring them up to their correct effective size, all I need to do is format each drive so that they will adjust to the proper size. If I am off the mark, which is a good possibility, please correct me, but they are wasting a ton of storage space and are considering purchasing more.

Thanks in advance for the support.

James

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

SpindleNinja — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 16:00:14 GMT

Can you post an example of the output you're seeing?

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

Harisheldon — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:08:33 GMT

This is just an example of some of the issues:

Name	State	Type	Effective Size	Physical Size	Aggregate	Shelf	Bay
2a.22.0	Partner	SAS	20.5MB	1.09TB		22	0
2a.22.10	Partner	SAS	20.5MB	1.09TB		22	10
2a.22.12	Partner	SAS	20.5MB	1.09TB		22	12

Thanks for the reply

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

SpindleNinja — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:55:04 GMT

I should have asked this before, but what version of ontap is this running?

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

Harisheldon — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 18:52:55 GMT

That would be Mode 7 Data version 8.2.5P1

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

SpindleNinja — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 19:09:54 GMT

Odd for sure. Couple additional questions:

If you look at it's partner node, does the disk look normal and is it part of an aggr or is it a spare?

Does "aggr status -r" look normal?

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

Harisheldon — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 19:18:09 GMT

It looks as thou, whoever configured this was different techs at different times. On one shelf, half of the hard drives are formatted correctly, and they have data on them, while the other half are formatted the way I showed you, and they do not have data on them.

This is just one of the problems that I have found and I was checking to see if my recommendation is correct, and that is to format the drives. Luckily, I do have one entire shelf, nothing on it and not assigned to any aggregate, in which I can play with. On the partner, they are all correctly formtted, that is why I am figuring that doing the format will fix it.

What is your opinion and thanks for the replies. I am done for the day in 15 minutes, so I will log on from home.

James

Re: Re-configuring the Effective Size of a Hard Drive

Harisheldon — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 19:20:20 GMT

Sorry, I forgot. Here is a snapshot of the aggr status

RAID Disk       Device          HA SHELF BAY CHAN Pool Type RPM Used (MB/blks)    Phys (MB/blks)
---------       ------          ------------- ---- ---- ---- ----- --------------    --------------
partner         2a.22.0         2a    22 0   SA:A   0   SAS 10000 0/0               1144641/2344225968
partner         0a.16           0a    1   0   FC:B   0 FCAL 15000 0/0               420156/860480768
partner         0a.41           0a    2   9   FC:B   0 FCAL 15000 0/0               420156/860480768
partner         0d.70           0d    4   6   FC:A   0 FCAL 15000 0/0               420156/860480768
partner         2d.10.2         2d    10 2   SA:A   0 BSAS 7200 0/0               1695759/3472914816
partner         2b.11.5         2b    11 5   SA:B   0 BSAS 7200 0/0               2543634/5209362816

You can see that the sizes just do not jive.