From a friends laptop, this drive I have powered up via usb to sata adapter. drive is detected but shows as unallocated. trying low level format tool it shows firmware as 0000, lba:122096646, capacity:500GB.
disk management console advises to initialise disk before it can be accessed, this shows the disk as unknown and not initialised.
low level format tool shows smart data as not supported, trying a format get :Operation terminated at offset 0 LBA 0.
Is there any hope for this drive (data recovery is not an issue) - or is it for the scrap heap.

Many thanks

Does the drive have a password? You could use CrystalDiskInfo to examine the security settings.

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

The number of LBAs (122096646) corresponds to a capacity of 62.5GB when the sector size is 512 bytes and 500.1GB when the sector size is 4096 bytes. Are you using a USB-SATA adapter that is configured with a 4KB sector size?

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE (freeware disc editor)?

http://dmde.com/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for your reply.
attached is screen for crystalmark and dmde as requested. dmde gave lots of errors which I had to ignore to get to the screen shot. hope that helps.

SMART looks good, so there is no evidence of any physical problem with the drive.

DMDE is reporting that the external enclosure is configured with 4KB sectoring. I know that early Windows versions had problems partitioning and formatting such devices, but I don't know about Win8 and Win 10. Seagate's DiscWizard should be able to format them, though. After formatting, Win XP works quite happily with 4Kn devices.

I thought that CrystalDiskInfo would show us the drive's security status, but apparently it does not. Sorry. Instead try HD Sentinel or HDDScan.

Here is the kind of info we are looking for:

Security Mode
Security Mode,Supported
Security Enabled,Yes
Security Locked,Yes
Security Frozen,No
Security Counter Expired,No
Security Level,High

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

thanks again for your help
couldn't see security info with hdd scan so here is info from hd sentinel

Also noted HD sentinel lists ATA info as;
Cylinders- 969021
Heads - 16
Sectors - 63

Label on HDD states
C - 16383
H - 16
S - 63

Don't bother with the CHS numbers on the label. They are only for compatibility with older systems.

969021 x 16 x 63 x 512 bytes = 500.1 GB

It appears the drive is not password protected. Were you able to read any sectors using DMDE? If not, then it may be that there is something wrong with the enclosure? Is it a repurposed WD My Book or Seagate enclosure?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

DMDE gives WinError 23, Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)
I'm using a Bipra USB to SATA/IDE Adapter
Ive tried this with a spare internal 3.5 inch drive and it works OK

The symptoms you describe seem to be consistent with a "firmware locked" drive that has been salvaged from a proprietary DVR or STB. I don't know why a laptop drive would behave this way.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Seems you could be correct. Spoke to the owner and he says he got drive from ebay to upgrade the smaller drive that was in laptop.
he didn't pass all the information on to begin with much to my disgust.
Is there any value in the drive or should I tell him to bin it and stay away from ebay.

It doesn't help you but it explains the problem to some extent:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... 1%26t=3534

There was some discussion of this problem at hddoracle.com. I believe someone found a solution, but I can't recall if it was something that an end user could do.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.