Hi, I'm looking for help to identify and fix an issue with my HDD.

Whats the HDD?
Western Digital RED WD40EFRX - 4TB, SATA 64MB Cache

How did the problem start?
I tried to use DBAN to wipe the HDD which failed midway through due to a power cut.

Why did you try to wipe the drive?
The drive was fully functional in my NAS for a few year. But I decided to upgrade my NAS and its drives and so I wanted to wipe the drives before selling them on.

What's the problem with the drive?
The device I'm using to connect the drive is a startech SATDOCK2REU3, see link (https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/satdock2reu3). When connecting the drive I am able to see it in Device Manage under "Disk Drives". However, I am not able to see the drive within "Computer Management" > "Disk Management". I also cannot see the drive in CMD when using "DISKPART" and the command "list disk".

Tonight I will try and connect the date directly via a SATA cable instead of the above USB dock to see if the problem differs. I.E. the docker is causing an issue.

Does the drive produce any noising, clicking, ticking etc.?
No, audibly the drive sounds fine like any other

Could anyone help with any additional directions I could take? Programs I could run to help identify or fix the problem. Data recovery is not my goal here, I'm happy to wipe the drive entirely. I just need the drive to be functional.

Many Thanks

Grab a linux livecd and check what it makes of the drive. There may be some windows tools someone else could recommend. Who knows what sort of state it's been left in by your NAS and DBAN.

If you're unlucky the power problems may have caused damage to the drive rather than just the logical structure but it's not likely if the drive is identified (ID and Capacity) correctly in the bios.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Ok, so a little update.

The good news is after plugging the drive into a PC via SATA, the drive is visible within the BIOS.

I'm not running a Linux USB and the following image is the current progress of booting in:
https://ibb.co/VwQTdxJ


I'll update again soon once I'm in the OS (fingers cross) and we'll see what it sees

If you have no interest in the data you might as well stop the file system check.

Once you're up an running have a look under "disks" and "gparted" you'll probably be able to nuke whatever is hanging around on the drive from there.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Ok, another update.

I got in to the OS, went into "disks" and I can see the disk, great. However, I then tried to format the disk to FAT32 so it will work in any system for the moment and I was instantly met with the following error:

"Error wiping device: Failed to probe the device '/dev/sda' (udisks-error-quark, 0)"


Any thoughts on this?

I forgot to say. I also launched gparted. On launch I got the following two errors which endlessly loop:

Error 1
Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sda: Input/output error


Error 2
Input/output error during read on /dev/sda

what's the output of hdparm -I /dev/sda from root at the terminal

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Results were pretty long, here's two screenshots:




I've now also run a Smart Self-Test Short and this is the results of that:

Looks like the drive has been left with the master password set which is why you can't do anything with it. You'll need to find out what dban sets the password to and either finish the secure erase with hdpram with it or remove it and start again.

I'm surprised dban can't recover from it and finish the format. Have you tried running it again?

Having looked at the smart results - I take it you already know the drive isn't healthy either.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Well that seems odd, I certainly never set a password.

I tried the dban erase a long time ago and can't remember what I did specifically, but I gave up after it went wrong so I'm picking up from where I left off.

I can try running dban again, but right now I don't want to start a long erase process ideally. I just wanted to get the drives functional again for myself to use. Or do I have no choice and will need to go through a long process?

It's been ages since I looked at dban but I'm guessing it set the password to do a secure erase and would have clear it when finished. Someone more familiar with it as a tool may be able to assist more.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

K I found out how to unlock the drive on a random website post here:
https://serverfault.com/questions/71284 ... ith-hdparm

I had to run a command or two first but this seemed to be the command which unlocked the device:
hdparm --user-master m --security-disable WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sda

I can now appear to format the drive in linux. YEY! Screenshot of progress:


My only worry is if the lock might reappear as I couldn't seem to run the final command:
Command hdparm --user-master m --security-disable WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sda
It resulted in:
security_password: "WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW"
/dev/sda: Permission denied

But I'm certainly a step closer and its good to see the drive isn't at all dead it was just a stupid password! So much for your help on this.

Do you think I should be okay after the format?

Sorry I typed the above incorrectly.

Command to remove the password was:
hdparm --user-master m --security-unlock WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sda

Command to keep it removed which did not work for me was:
hdparm --user-master m --security-disable WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sda

SMART looks OK to me. :-?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

To quickly roll back I was confused by this note:

Rason I'm confused is from what I can see on that smart test screen, it appeared the results of the SMART test were good. Is that not how you read it?

fzabkar also seems to agree:

And this boys and girls is why you should always check what you're told on the internet - especially at 5pm on a Friday afternoon after a long week. I only briefly looked at the picture and didn't check the column headers If everything is clear after the format finished you're good to go.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/