Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 won't SecureErase

[NRA]

Hi guys)

It's been awhile since I badly needed some explanations, but this very situations does require some clarifications for sure. Ok, there's a subject Hitachi 160GB SATA-2 HDD with somewhat tolerable stats:

Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 P22OABEA [160,04 GB] (312581808 512-byte sectors)

Attribute Current Worst Raw Note
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 01 Read error rate 100 100 0
2 02 Throughput performance 100 100 0
3 03 Spin up time 130 130 12894863514
4 04 Number of spin-up times 99 99 4255
5 05 Reallocated sectors count 100 100 15
7 07 Seek error rate 100 100 0
8 08 Seek performance 100 100 0
9 09 Power-on time 99 99 12186
10 0A Spin-up retries 100 100 0
12 0C Power Cycles 99 99 4225
192 C0 Power-off retract count 97 97 4509
193 C1 Load/unload cycle count 97 97 4509
194 C2 HDA Temperature 181 181 244813856801 (33 degree)
196 C4 Reallocate event count 100 100 15
197 C5 Current pending sectors 100 100 0
198 C6 Offline scan UNC sectors 100 100 0
199 C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 200 253 4

A friend of mine told me it was working fine till recently it began copying data in "bursts" or portions, so I decided to wipe it clean via a vendor's Security Erase. Thus, it says the security is OFF and virtually ebables doing anything, yet the problem is it cannot do Secure Erase properly! E.g. Dell Vostro mobo in the IDE mode runs Victoria 4.47b under WinPE and in PIO mode it says everything is fine, so it locks the drive, takes BUSY flag, and in about an hour (very plausible) it reports eveything is done, but... All the info and partitions are still there! Another retry, a different software, a different cable, a different port--the same; a different drive erases purely as it should.

Yep, the device is rather outsdated, but WHY it doesn't process its SE routine properly? Who knows... I'm just out of ideas for now. Actually, I'm going to try LowFormatting, however, first I would rather find out what's wrong with the patient.

TY

[NRA]

So I did "Restore DCO" and LowFormatted the drive, created aligned NTFS partitions, tested it for speed and stability--it's quite live and kicking atm, so I'm expecting my friend to bring his MS install disk...

Yet I'm still not sure how it could e/simulate (?) Security Erase routine, but as far as the device is working fine, I'm a bit reluctant to retry Security Erase. On the other hand, it might be not just a simple glitch or Enhanced SE opt which is not available for the drive, but something more serious, having something to do with, say, its writing ability, degrading/wearing out or microcode failure.

How serious is such SE malfunctioning might be *when* the drive passes the tests and runs pretty smoothly?

TY

[NRA]

Hmm. Perhaps our specialist and gurus are very busy now, yet I've got one more question regarding the subj.

As far as the owner hadn't brought his install DVD, I wanted to do some HDD tests, booted WinPE, but got a call and left it idling for awhile.
When some 20 mins later I returned, the HDD temperature was about 44'C--without any load!
The environment is 23'C, the case is quite big and open, but no HDD cooler was attached.
I put a 80mm cooler which decreased the HDD temperature to acceptable 32'C, yet still.

Also it periodically (once in some 10-15 mins) makes about 2-second periods of 'buzzing.'
Is it really dying or I'm just paranoid?

Still in doubts.