Using former raid drives as single drives ?

[spystyle]

Hello from Maine,

I have some hard drives that were formerly in a striping raid array. I am not able to use them as single drives now.

I tried to bring them back to life with Acronis Disk Director program, but no luck.

How can I get these drives going again ?

Thanks!

Craig

[allen2]

Connect them to the raid controller again and destroy the raid array if it was a real raid controller (not for a desktop computer or integrated on the motherboard).

Another way might be using the tools from the hard drive maker to clean them. If you post the make and model, we might help find the right tool.

[uid0]

Wouldn't dban or SecureErase or diskpart clean be enough?

[jaclaz]

Wouldn't dban or SecureErase or diskpart clean be enough?

Actually much more than enough.

The ONLY needed thing is usually to 00 out the first sector of the device, if - for any reason - "normal" Disk Management cannot deal with it.

More commonly the only actual thing that may be needed is to 00 out last two bytes of first sector, removing the "Magic Bytes" 55AA, and thus getting, as soon as you open Disk Management, the prompt to "initialize" the disk:

http://reboot.pro/12253/

jaclaz

[spystyle]

Thanks for the replies fellas

I was able to get 2 drives working by trying to format them with a Win XP CD (that has sata drivers added)

2 Hitachi drives are giving me trouble, each sata 250 GB, I try to test them with "Hitachi Drive Fitness Test boot CD" and the program says "Device is password protected and can not be tested"

I also tried dban boot CD on one and it ran for 4 hours with less than 1% being complete. So I quit it.

Any ideas ?

Thanks,

Craig from Maine

[jaclaz]

2 Hitachi drives are giving me trouble, each sata 250 GB, I try to test them with "Hitachi Drive Fitness Test boot CD" and the program says "Device is password protected and can not be tested"

Maybe, just maybe, if a Manufacturer tool says that one of their disk drives is "password protected and can not be tested" maybe it is because ACTUALLY the device is "password protected".

Any ideas ?

Remove the password from the disk.

This may be possible or not depending whether you know the password and WHICH type of password has been set.

The mentioned SecureErase/HDDerase may be able to deal with it, as well as hdparm:

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/articles/a/t/a/ATA_Secure_Erase_936d.html

Read this, also:

http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html

jaclaz

[spystyle]

Thanks

I Googled that up and found ATAPWD 1.2 is on the Hi___'s boot CD.

(When you boot from the CD it's under DOS tools)

So I tried that, but it did not see the hard drive

-------------------------------

(edited to be kosher)

Sorry I did not realize that was warez

Edited February 28, 2012 by spystyle

[jaclaz]

I Googled that up and found ATAPWD 1.2 is on the WAREZ

Good, now go and wash your mouth fingers with soap!

jaclaz

[spystyle]

OK, I did wash

[jaclaz]

OK, I did wash

Good, now you have to find out which kind of password (if any) is set (of course should you be able to retrieve this kind of info from the "old" raid machine it could be easier).

WHICH OS are you running/have available?

I presume that using "normal" hdparm under Linux woud be "more direct", but you can try using the NT port:

What happens when you follow the instructions here?

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/articles/a/t/a/ATA_Secure_Erase_936d.html

Review this thread if you are using a Windows NT:

http://reboot.pro/13601/

jaclaz