SPTI errors on one PC

[lif]

I have set up three identical PC-s, two of them are working ok, one gives errors. All PC-s have brand new SATA HDDs.

Ok, scenario is following: PC HDD is partitioned to two parts, one small part is to be used locally (for example C: in windows) and the other partition is intended to be used via iSCSI. The latest version of StarWind which allowed to do this (without locking) is 2.4.0, so I'm using this one. Can't do this with more up-to-date versions as they gives errors about can't lock device \\.\PhysicalDrive0. The initiator is Linux. With two machines StarWind reports to its log only one error:
SPTI: '\\.\Physicaldrive0': *ERROR* Wrong LUN 0x100. Only LUN 0 is supported!
But despite this everything is working ok. On one PC the log is full of following and can't write nor read anything via iSCSI:
SPTI: '\\.\Physicaldrive0': DeviceIoControl failed: The parameter is incorrect. (code: 87).
08:58:31:625 (1108) SPTI: '\\.\Physicaldrive0': IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT (before):
0000 2c 00 00 00 00 00 0a 12 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 ,...............
0010 e0 a5 01 00 38 40 0c 00 2c 00 00 00 28 00 03 41 ą..8@..,...(..A
0020 95 89 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 •‰..............
0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
08:58:31:625 (1108) SPTI: '\\.\Physicaldrive0': IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT (after):
0000 2c 00 00 00 00 00 0a 12 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 ,...............
0010 e0 a5 01 00 38 40 0c 00 2c 00 00 00 28 00 03 41 ą..8@..,...(..A
0020 95 89 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 •‰..............
0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

I can't understand why the third one is not working? I need to use SPTI not image.

[Val (staff)]

Hi,

1) Please use the recent StarWind version. The old versions like 2.4.0 includes many bugs and issues.

2) You can't to share a part of hard drive with SPTI. Only the whole device can be shared or nothing.

3) You can't share the only hard drive (or a system disk) with SPTI, because the mode demands the device to be exclusively locked and protected from local system's access.
There was a bug in version 2.4.0 that allowed such an access, but this will definitely lead the disk data to corruption. :(

4) Only readonly mode can be used for a system drive to access its data remotely, but this way has it own issues: if the local system writes something to the disk, the remote system does not aware about them and will use logically broken disk content.

5) There was an issue with parsing of LUN codes in the old StarWind version. It seems the error messages are related to this.

6) If you need to share a part of a hard disk to remote users, I'd suggest you using the ImageFile plugin.
To access the virtual drive from the local system you can use a loacl iSCSI initiator (StarPort ot the MS iSCSI initiator).
But anyway you can connect only one initiator to a target to keep your data integrity.

I hope my answers help you a bit.