I just got a Toshiba Canvio Desk 2TB external HD that my plans are to delete the NTFS partition and put on an EXT4 one.
Thing is the first 106MB are unallocated. Why?
If this was a Chinese product, I would be worried. I actually found a 'call home' USB stick once. One MIGHT think that Toshiba has decent quality control. But why the unallocated space; is this for sector replacement?
Actually, I probably would not delete the partition, but only reformat it as EXT4.
Seems to be a rather nice unit. Drive did not power up until I connected the USB; very convient not to have to unplug it to save on power usage.
On Dec 30, 2013, at 4:22 PM, Robert Moskowitz rgm@htt-consult.com wrote:
I just got a Toshiba Canvio Desk 2TB external HD that my plans are to delete the NTFS partition and put on an EXT4 one.
Thing is the first 106MB are unallocated. Why?
Can you post the results from 'parted -l /dev/sdX u s p' that might be useful. This was new in box?
If this was a Chinese product, I would be worried. I actually found a 'call home' USB stick once. One MIGHT think that Toshiba has decent quality control. But why the unallocated space; is this for sector replacement?
Those are hidden on modern drives. When a physical sector is replaced, it no longer has an LBA, it's reassigned to the replacement. It's one of the reasons zeroing drives is an almost pointless security task because substituted sectors still contain data and are erase only the ATA Security Erase functions.
Seems to be a rather nice unit. Drive did not power up until I connected the USB; very convient not to have to unplug it to save on power usage.
I see, it's in an enclosure, so chances are this is some weirdness on the part of the vendor who partitioned and pre-formatted the drive, rather than something the OEM did. I'm a nut, so I'd pull the drive, SATA or eSATA it to a board, and ATA Secure Erase the thing, take a baseline smartctl -x sample, put it back into its enclosure, and then GPT partition and format it.
I might even go so far as to use gdisk to partition it twice, once outside and once inside the enclosure, and make sure the relevant data are identical, in particular the number of physical sectors. There are some enclosure firmware floating around that misreport the size of the drive so you end up with a drive partitioned one way in the enclosure and yet the backup partition is reported as missing or damaged when pulled from the enclosure. Such enclosure deserve to be returned as defective.
Chris Murphy
On 12/30/2013 06:46 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Dec 30, 2013, at 4:22 PM, Robert Moskowitz rgm@htt-consult.com wrote:
I just got a Toshiba Canvio Desk 2TB external HD that my plans are to delete the NTFS partition and put on an EXT4 one.
Thing is the first 106MB are unallocated. Why?
Can you post the results from 'parted -l /dev/sdX u s p' that might be useful. This was new in box?
It is brand new from a sealed box. And the the command seems to have done both drives:
# parted -l /dev/sdb u s p Model: ATA TOSHIBA MK3261GS (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 320GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 525MB 524MB primary ext4 boot 2 525MB 320GB 320GB primary lvm
Model: TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 106MB 2000GB 2000GB primary ntfs
Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/fedora_19-home: 280GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: loop Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Flags 1 0.00B 280GB 280GB ext4
Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/fedora_19-root: 31.5GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: loop Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Flags 1 0.00B 31.5GB 31.5GB ext4
Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/fedora_19-swap: 8389MB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: loop Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Flags 1 0.00B 8389MB 8389MB linux-swap(v1)
why the unallocated space; is this for sector replacement?
Those are hidden on modern drives. When a physical sector is replaced, it no longer has an LBA, it's reassigned to the replacement. It's one of the reasons zeroing drives is an almost pointless security task because substituted sectors still contain data and are erase only the ATA Security Erase functions.
I thought so. My revised thinking is that if I were to put this drive on a Win system and run the install software, this unused space will be used to create a partition for managing the backups.
Seems to be a rather nice unit. Drive did not power up until I connected the USB; very convient not to have to unplug it to save on power usage.
I see, it's in an enclosure, so chances are this is some weirdness on the part of the vendor who partitioned and pre-formatted the drive, rather than something the OEM did.
Toshiba in both cases. Just probably different groups in Toshiba.
I'm a nut, so I'd pull the drive, SATA or eSATA it to a board, and ATA Secure Erase the thing, take a baseline smartctl -x sample, put it back into its enclosure, and then GPT partition and format it.
I might even go so far as to use gdisk to partition it twice, once outside and once inside the enclosure, and make sure the relevant data are identical, in particular the number of physical sectors. There are some enclosure firmware floating around that misreport the size of the drive so you end up with a drive partitioned one way in the enclosure and yet the backup partition is reported as missing or damaged when pulled from the enclosure. Such enclosure deserve to be returned as defective.
You are a nut, but does not mean some squirrel is not out to get you! :)
This case is NOT made to be opened in the field. So I am just going to use the Gnome disk gui tool, delete the partition, and go from there.
Unless the partd output I included at the beginning gives you any idea of something else going on...
It was pointed out to me, off list, that I am generally targeting a country (China) for bad behaviour in this email. I apologize to people this affends. I have many colleagues in the IETF and IEEE from China and work closely with them. I am applying for a visa to attend the IEEE 802 meeting there in March, and have been asked to speak at a conference in June. I check out all devices I get to see if malicious code is present. Since most is targeted for MS OSs, we can find them in Linux.
Anyway, sorry for coming on a little strong there.
On 12/30/2013 06:22 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I just got a Toshiba Canvio Desk 2TB external HD that my plans are to delete the NTFS partition and put on an EXT4 one.
Thing is the first 106MB are unallocated. Why?
If this was a Chinese product, I would be worried. I actually found a 'call home' USB stick once. One MIGHT think that Toshiba has decent quality control. But why the unallocated space; is this for sector replacement?
Actually, I probably would not delete the partition, but only reformat it as EXT4.
Seems to be a rather nice unit. Drive did not power up until I connected the USB; very convient not to have to unplug it to save on power usage.
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Chris Murphy -
Robert Moskowitz