Reuse two drives that were in RAID 0 from dead computer

[ThunderBird Smith]

I removed two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120 Gb drives from my old computer that was toast. I do NOT need any data from these drives. They had been a RAID 0 pair that utilized the 3rd party chip on the Abit iC7 motherboard. I use a StarTech USB/Esata hard drive dock that works fine with a new 1.5tb drive that I have, so I know the dock is ok, with either cable hookup. I have installed the free version of Active@KillDisk in an attempt to wipe the drives for reuse as backups for video files. When I run this program, the drive (either of them) is read by the program as a RAID disk and it seems to attempt to begin the wipe but never actually does. Also, a program install alert pops up for: "Intel Matrix Storage Console". I have run KillDisk both with this Intel program installed and not installed- same result....no wipe. BTW, Windows (Win 7 Home Premium) Explorer does not "see" these drives, although it reports the presence of the Seagate 1.5tb drive normally.

Another forum suggested: "Sounds like the RAID super block is stored in a Host Protected Area; you need a disk eraser that can detect and erase an HPA."

To date, no one has suggested a disk eraser that can do that. As these are only 120gb drives it does not make much sense to pay too much for a program capable of such a feat. Freeware would be a bonus!

Any ideas??

[pseudolobster]

I doubt it. I really doubt the raid flag would ever be stored in the HPA.. I'd try a different wiping program tbh, I've never liked active killdisk. Try DBAN, you can get it from dban.org

Also make sure you've removed the array in your RAID BIOS... When you boot up, you should see some sort of message about RAID, along with something that says "press ctrl+S to enter raid setup" or something. Intel raid is usually ctrl+I, nvidia/mediashield raid is usually ctrl+F, jmicron raid is usually ctrl+S, LSI raid is usually ctrl+M, etc.
If the array is still defined in your raid setup utility, there's no way any utility will ever see the actual drives, they'll only be able to manipulate the array as one drive.

[ThunderBird Smith]

Thanks pseudolobster! I will look into DBAN asap. I never used Activ@KillDisk either before this.

As for the rest of your post, the computer that the drives WERE on is TOAST.... gone (thanks CragisList) so there is no way to "UN-RAID" them, but even before the chassis left the bldg it would have been impossible as the thing truly was INOP. Any other ideas, please send them out!

[drc]

If you're not trying to use them as RAID, try going into your BIOS and turning off RAID mode (use ATA or legacy or whatever it calls it). To erase them you can then use something like MHDD, but if the mobo isn't trying to see them as RAID it won't matter if you erase or not.

[mdarwish]

Hi ThunderBird Smith,

You've mentioned in your post that you can't see the drives in Windows Explorer.

But can you see the disk in Windows Disk Management?.

If you can, try to "UN-RAID" them by deleting the volume and use convert the Dynamic disk to Basic Disk in Windows Disk Management. That's how it is usually done in Windows.

Good luck!

[Steve]

Download a trial version of NTexplorer from runtime.org
select the drive click edit/select all edit/fill
fill the drive with zeroes.. then use windows to initalize and format.

BUT make sure you select the correct drive to zero fill.