Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Need MHDD command to clear glist plist WD1200JB

September 21st, 2010, 0:57

Drive had a bad board. The board went flaky over time (corrosion on HDA connector), and as it did, it filled up the GLIST with bad sectors which were not actually bad, because of the bad HDA contact caused by the corrosion.

Cleaned the HDA contacts and replaced the board, but now I'm stuck with a few actual bad sectors that cannot be remapped because the GLIST is full.

Low level reformatted the drive using micro-scope and the drive now tests perfect in MHDD from LBA 4000000 to the end of the drive, but I'd like to be able to use those first 4 million sectors too. MHDD FASTERASE fails with ERR.

PM ok. Muchos gracias amigos y amigas.

Re: Need MHDD command to clear glist plist WD1200JB

September 21st, 2010, 3:16

Hi, You might be able to clear the GLIST with the Hdderase utility but only if the drive supports the 'enhanced security erase function'.

From the readme.......
Q: What is the difference between secure erase and enhanced secure erase?

A: Secure erase overwrites all user data areas with binary zeroes. Enhanced
secure erase writes predetermined data patterns (set by the manufacturer) to
all user data areas, including sectors that are no longer in use due to
reallocation. ***NOTE: the enhanced secure erase option is not supported by
all ATA drives.

Re: Need MHDD command to clear glist plist WD1200JB

September 21st, 2010, 8:21

To me it won't clear any G-list. It will TRY to clear ALSO the sectors in G-list for extended safety that otherwise would be excluded from erasing process, but the list itself won't be cleared. It's like internal formatting taking into account G-list entries.
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