It doesn’t really need to be tedious… My notes are jokey, full of profanity, sarcasm, and self deprecating humor

So worse than tedium.

My notes are jokey, full of profanity, sarcasm, and self deprecating humor

I meant tedious, as in, it takes some effort to pause, write the shit down, and then proceed on. I can only speak for myself, but when I’m in the zone doing something, excitement can overshadow note taking. So, I have to make myself document line by line. But, yeah I have entries like ‘Before proceeding, make sure you do _____ , dumbass!’ LOL

Thank you, I did forget the glare.

Sorry for the mess with replies.

Please see the last comment I made on my own comment instead of yours where it should have been.

Your drive is almost certainly not dead, you just need a T10 / DIF capable controller to disable the PROTECTION flag.

Read more in the other post.

Thanks for the additional details, that helps, but there are still some critical gaps that prevent a proper diagnosis.

Two important points first:

The dmesg output needs to be complete, from boot until the moment the affected drive is first detected.
What you posted is cut short and misses the most important part: the SCSI/SAS negotiation, protection information handling, block size reporting, and any sense errors when the kernel first sees the disk.

Please reboot, then run as root or use sudo:

dmesg -T > dmesg-full.txt

1. Do not filter or truncate it. Upload the full file.

2. All diagnostic commands must be run with sudo/root, otherwise capabilities, mode pages, and protection features may not be visible or may be incomplete.

Specifically, please re-run and provide full output (verbatim) of the following, all with sudo or as root, on the problem drive and (if possible) on a working identical drive for comparison:

sudo lspci -nnkvv

sudo lsblk -o NAME,MODEL,SIZE,PHY-SeC,LOG-SeC,ROTA

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdX

sudo sg_inq -vv /dev/sdX

sudo sg_readcap -ll /dev/sdX

sudo sg_modes -a /dev/sdX

sudo sg_vpd -a /dev/sdX

Replace /dev/sdX with the correct device name as it appears at that moment.

Why this matters:

• The Intel SATA controller you listed is not the LSI HBA. We need to see exactly which controller the drive is currently attached to and what features the kernel believes it supports.

• That Seagate model is a 520/528-capable SAS drive with DIF/T10 PI support. If it was formatted with protection enabled and is now attached to a controller/driver path that does not expect DIF, Linux will report I/O errors even though the drive itself is fine.

• sg_format -vv output alone does not tell us the current logical block size, protection type, or mode page state.

Important clarification:

• Formatting the drive under TrueNAS (with a proper SAS HBA) and then attaching it to a different system/controller is a very common way to trigger exactly this situation.

• This is still consistent with a recoverable configuration mismatch, not a permanently damaged disk.

Once we have:

• Full boot-time dmesg

• Root-level SCSI inquiry, mode pages, and read capacity

• Confirmation of which controller is actually in use

…it becomes possible to say concretely whether the drive needs:

• Reformatting to 512/4096 with protection disabled

• A controller that supports DIF

• Or if there is actual media or firmware failure (less likely)

At this point, the drive is “unusable”, not proven “bricked”. The missing data is the deciding factor.

One more important thing to verify, given the change of machines:

Please confirm whether the controller in the original TrueNAS system is the same type of LSI/Broadcom SAS HBA as the one in the current troubleshooting system.

This matters because:

DIF/T10 PI is handled by the HBA and driver, not just the drive.

A drive formatted with protection information on one controller may appear broken when moved to a different controller that does not support (or is not configured for) DIF.

Many onboard SATA/RAID controllers and some HBAs will enumerate a DIF-formatted drive but fail all I/O.

If the original TrueNAS machine used:

• A proper SAS HBA with DIF support

then the best recovery path may be to put the drive back into that original system and either:

• Reformat it there with protection disabled, or

• Access it normally if the controller and OS were already DIF-aware

If the original controller was different:

• Please provide lspci -nnkvv output from that system as well (using sudo or run as root)

• And confirm the exact HBA model and firmware used in the TrueNAS SAS controller

At the moment, the controller change introduces an unknown that can fully explain the symptoms by itself. Verifying controller parity between systems is necessary before assuming the drive itself is at fault.

(edit:)

One last thing, how long did you let sg_format run for?

It can take hours to complete one percent if the drive is large, probably a full day or more considering the capacity of your drive.

I was just wondering if it might have been cut short for some reason and just needs to be restarted on the original hardware to complete the process and bring the drive back online.

Of course we can blame them. There’s a ton of great help available, but perhaps they’re like you, and their ego is so fragile that they can’t be troubled to scroll past a few trolls to find the perfect answers.

But I think we’re all used to dealing with trolls. Everyone knows how to ignore the trolls. I think the bigger problem is that people are afraid to show ignorance, even if they definitely are ignorant, like OP was here. Imagine that, you don’t want to look foolish on the internet in front of people who don’t know who you are and never will, so you turn to a solution that doesn’t work and actually has the potential to ruin the hardware you bought… So yeah, that’s strange, that’s not rational, we can give psychological explanations, but none of them make the person in question appear reasonable.

Can you blame them?

Yes. LLMs don’t make anyone not responsible for their output.

If your dumb friend gave you bad advice and you followed it, you are ultimately still responsible for your decisions.

You can ask knowledgeable people for help instead of an ai tho

I’m torn in how to feel about this. it was stupid to turn to a chatbot for things you know nothing about, as you then can’t even verify anything. and when you are a beginner, you probably shouldn’t start with SAS hardware either because it’s more complicated with the added enterprise features.

Can you really blame anyone who turns to AI, because that garbage at least sounds like it tries to help you?

A comfortable lie is still a lie. Everything that comes out of an LLM is a lie until proven otherwise. (“Lie” is a bit misleading, though, as they don’t have agency or intent: they’re a variation of your phone keyboard’s next-word text prediction algorithm. With added flattery and confidence.)

There’s a reason experienced people stress hard to others about not using them as shortcuts to your own knowledge. This is the outcome.

Another way to look at it is “trust, but verify”. If you’re intent on relying on probabilistic text as an answer, instead of bothering to learn, then take what it’s given you and verify what that does before doing it. You could learn to be an effective sloperator with just that common sense.

But if you’re going to give an LLM root/admin access to a production environment, then expect to be laughed at, because you had plenty of opportunities to not destroy something and actively chose not to use them.

The manuals are written by experts for experts and in most cases entirely useless for complete beginners who likely won’t be able to even find the right manual page (or even the right manual to begin with).

Asking for help online just gets you a “lol, RTFM, noob!”

This is a thing that honestly still makes me seethe sometimes, because as much as the manuals are there and people should be told to read the manual before anything else, there is a vast difference between a user’s manual and a technical manual. People who answer basic questions by telling the user to RTFManpage instead of leading them to the bropage or the tl;drpage or a simple use case tutorial (or even better, providing the example themselves) ironically builds bad cred for a movement for well-documented software.

The User’s Manual for a car covers, at best, how to turn the ignition on, how to drive, how to brake in difficult conditions and how to change the tires. Maybe it covers where exactly the friggin’ cupholder is. A Technical Manual for a car is for when there’s a real exceptional emergency that’s not simply covered by user service. The computer does not work and someone (not you, but the technician!) needs to know how to pin the RS232 connectors for the emergency interface of the onboard chip. The refrigeration liquid tube has broken off and you need to know what model or measurements the replacement needs to be and what heat can it withstand before it starts melting and likely obstructing the valve. You need to know if (or for how long) the car’s engine can withstand frontal semiautomatic fire and up to what reverse speed can the vehicle perform a safe J-turn maneuver in case you face an ambush.

~95% of manpages I’ve ever seen are Technical Manuals. ~70% of “help” for non-browser systems, as well.

What beginners need to be directed at before anything else is the User’s Manual.

And if that one is not available, go get writing it.

</rant>

All that said, none of that excuses turning to AI. AI is explicitly and specifically for when you don’t want things to work, or for when you are specifically looking for someone to bullshit you. They are for evading responsibility, not for finding solutions.

I mean look at OPs horrible post screenshots and one rotated 90 degrees. Come on they put in little effort don’t expect lots of effort back.

Look at this thread right now and count how many snarky bullshit answers are there that don’t even try to answer the question Can you really blame anyone who turns to AI, because that garbage at least sounds like it tries to help you?

Oh this so very much. We’ve ALL made horrific mistakes, most of which don’t get published on a forum for fear of the snark. It really irks me. But, there’s not much I can do about people’s attitudes. All of us were clueless, newbs, at one time or another, unless you were born with a computing device in your hand, in which case, I feel sorry for your mum.

You’re getting hate but you’re right. Friendliness in tech forums is nearly nonexistent.

Asking for help online just gets you a “lol, RTFM, noob!”

Depends heavily on what place you ask for help in. There are plenty of spaces explicitly meant for community tech support. In OPs case, I’ll say the title doesn’t help and asking an LLM for advice on a topic you’re unfamiliar with (and not second-guessing the commands you paste into the terminal) is such a bad idea that it really can’t be understated. I regularly catch some of my colleagues making AI-assisted mistakes and they’re professionals who genuinely know better. This shit shouldn’t ever be recommended as a learning tool for beginners without some kind of supervision or guard rails to ensure you’re not being gaslit.

How do you have the SAS drive connected to your Mint 22 box (what exact adapter/controller)? Is it going through a real SAS HBA (LSI/Broadcom-style, IT/HBA mode), or through a RAID controller / USB-SAS bridge / “virtual” adapter?

Reason I’m asking: there are basically two connection paths:

• True HBA/passthrough: Linux gets direct SCSI access (you’ll see a /dev/sgX for the disk) and you can usually low-level reformat it back to 512-byte logical blocks (e.g., from 520/528).
• RAID/USB/translation layer: the controller hides or emulates the SCSI commands, so tools like sg_format often can’t issue the low-level format needed to switch the sector size. That might be why the disk is visible in the disks app but not in gparted.

Given the screen shots I believe it’s the later. Can someone smarter than me confirm?

USB enclosures for SAS drives are available

My dogs, whom I love like a family member, and one of which is my seizure dog, know the lab is off limits.

You said it correctly: ‘from the internet’.

I actually had an AI assist me in flashing the firmware, as well as flashing a custom ROM later on, of a phone I was just testing on for fun, and I was only confident since I had a chunk of prior knowledge of ADB as well as other tools and the differences between mobile and desktop system structures, and for the stuff I didn’t understand or know, I just researched externally and figured it out.

Blindly trusting it though is a fools errand, just like myself a few years back messing with my laptop’s Linux install, copy pasting everything and then complaining when shit broke.

The only useful thing I’ve found so good for is quickly scrubbing though shops. They are really good at looking at hundreds of urls and reviewing the content and then vomiting up the results

When looking for a laptop it was invaluable.

Those sub reddits that are basically nothing but people asking for laptop recommendations basically could just be replaced with a LLM.

AI is after all the perfect example of wisdom of the masses. Aka 80% accurate 80% of the time.

Seriously trying to find a 18 inch hdr laptop with a AMD CPU and replaceable ram that did not contain a laundry list of parts that I know have no driver support on Linux… Is a pain in the ass. Cause half the time AMD laptops arnt advertised at fucking all and sit on some random page you have to know just exists.

Even using newegg filters couldn’t find the fucking laptop cause of mislabeling. But the AI found it.

Fucking thing is like a web crawler on crack.