ISDCT occasionally reports very high NativeMaxLBA

[Daniel_M_Intel2]

Hi,

We sometimes encounter a problem where ISDCT reports very high NativeMaxLBA. I have logs from Ubuntu 16 (I'm not sure if problem happens on other OSes), where NVMe drive is formatted to atomic format (LBAF 1):

nvme_id_ns /dev/nvme0n1 | grep '(in use)'

# Exit code: 0, duration: 00:00:00.0155966

# stdout:

# lbaf 1 : ms:8 ds:9 rp:0x2 (in use)

isdct show -display Index -intelssd

# Exit code: 0, duration: 00:00:00.1250539

# stdout:

# - Intel SSD DC P3700 Series CVFT42150041400BGN -

# Index : 0

# - Intel SSD DC P3700 Series CVFT42150085400BGN -

# Index : 1

# - Intel SSD DC S3700 Series BTTV227401GB100FGN -

# Index : 2

# - Intel SSD DC S3700 Series BTTV227301HG100FGN -

# Index : 3

isdct show -display NativeMaxLBA -intelssd 0

# Exit code: 0, duration: 00:00:00.1250295

# stdout:

# - Intel SSD DC P3700 Series CVFT42150041400BGN -

# NativeMaxLBA : 9223372036854775807

isdct set -intelssd 0 MaximumLBA=native

# Exit code: 0, duration: 00:00:00.1406744

# stdout:

# Set MaximumLBA successful. Please power cycle the device.

isdct show -display MaximumLBA -intelssd 0

# Exit code: 0, duration: 00:00:00.1250353

# stdout:

# - Intel SSD DC P3700 Series CVFT42150041400BGN -

# MaximumLBA : 781422767

The value displayed in red is max Int64 value. As you can see after setting NativeMaxLBA to 'native' value returns to normal. Any ideas what could cause such behavior?

[Daniel_M_Intel2]

Hi Eugenio,

After new firmware was uploaded I've tested formatting with both ISDCT 3.0.9 and 3.0.10, and now also on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 (kernel 4.4.103-6.38-default) (both ISDCT versions).

Every time I get:

# isdct start -intelssd 0 -nvmeformat LBAFormat = 1 SecureEraseSetting = 0 MetadataSettings = 1

WARNING! You have selected to format the drive!

Proceed with the format? (Y|N): y

Formatting...(This can take several minutes to complete)

- Intel SSD DC P3700 Series CVFT4215005G400BGN -

Status : NVMe command reported a problem.

Regards,

Daniel

[idata]

Hello Daniel,

Thank you so much for taking the time to ran the tests.Please allow us more time to keep investigating based on this information.Best regards,Eugenio F.

[idata]

Hello Deix,

Thanks for your patience.

We were able to update firmware on our Intel® SSD P3700 to the latest version (8DV101H0) and format it to LBA1. We also noticed the NativeMaxLBA reported as normal.

The test was run on Cent OS 7*, please refer to the attached log for the command flow. Tests on Ubuntu* are still pending.

If you have any system with Cent OS*, you may test formatting the drives there. We'll let you know as soon as we run tests on Ubuntu*.

Best regards,

Eugenio F.

[idata]

Hello Deix,

We've performed a the test on Ubuntu 16.04. We secured erase drive and were able to successfully format to LBAF 1.

However, we did notice the NativeMaxLBA was reporting a high value. Though this doesn't affect drive performance, I've reported the issue to our engineers.

As for the drives, please let us know if you're still experimenting issues to format them to LBAF 1.

Best regards,

Eugenio F.

[Daniel_M_Intel2]

Eugenio, thanks for investigating this.

I'm glad that the high Max LBA issue was noticed, and hopefully will be fixed soon, although it looks a bit different than the issue I have encountered (in your case the value looks quite random, in mine it looked like -1 unsigned overflow - 0x‭7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF‬).

Unfortunately I will not have time to pursue the formatting issue anytime soon (the problem is still present).

Thanks for your help and time!

Daniel