I just baught a new hard drive to replace a failing one on a RAID array. The new drive is an ST39204LW firmware 006 which is exactly the same as all the other drives in the RAID.

The new drive only reports a size of 8683 MB to the SCSI controller instead of 8750 like all the other 12 drives.

Since the size is smaller I can't add it into the RAID.

I have tried Low Level formating the drive with both the Mylex 2000 RAID controller and an Adaptec 29160 from another computer. Both drives report the same size.

How can an identical drive with identical firmware have a different topology from every other drive?

Any Suggestions?

I have two identical drives with different sizes also. My guess is that one has more defective clusters than the other.

Defective Clusters should lower the available bytes, not the total bytes. Besides the drive is brand new outa the box.

A SCSI device maps from an external controller, so the controller should have they exact charistics of the drive. (It just doesn't give them to BIOS.)

The drive reports the exact size as an older ST39103. I thought maybe it was low level formated wrong at the factory - but the controller LL format should have corrected that.

I have no clue what to do with this drive.

"Defective Clusters should lower the available bytes, not the total bytes."

I'm not sure that there is any difference in a new drive.

"Besides the drive is brand new outa the box."

A good percentaget of new drives have some bad sectors. They are marked unavailable when the factory does the low level format.