Hard Drives Disappeared After Erasing Attempt

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I had a windfall, picked up 3 HDD's from work, they are 10TB Seagate Ironwolf's. I wanted to make sure they were good and then erase them to get them up for sale since I don't need them. I plugged all 3 into available SATA ports and gave them power. I ran SeaTools within Windows 7 and performed all of the SMART / short / long / and other testing options (long took over half a day for each). So far, so good.

As a last step I used Sea Tools to erase them, and that's where things seemed to go wrong. I let the program sit and run but after about half a day there wasn't any progress bar movement, and the drives were spinning but weren't warm. I got the feeling nothing was happening so I closed the program - through its own buttons, not via Ctrl+Alt+Del or by just shutting down the PC. I thought I'd try again or try another program.

Now, restarting the PC is excruciatingly slow. Starting Seatools is also super slow, and it doesn't see the drives any more. The BIOS does see them however. The AOMEI free program sees them, but takes so long (several minutes) between every mouse click that it seems all but useless as well. I downloaded and booted from "Hirens boot cd" - the Seagate tool in it also can't see the drives, and the Mini XP included in took over 30 minutes trying to boot but never actually got to a desktop.

So at this point the BIOS and programs see the drives, but anything attempt to do anything with them takes so long they seem useless or they simply can't find them to start with. I'm really hoping that's enough info someone can point me the right direction to get these things working again! I'm sure they "work", I just need to... do.... something to them first.

Please help! Thank you!

 

[EXCellR8]

Do you have an external dock to try them in? It might be the SATA controller on the board, or its drivers, that's giving you some trouble.

 

[corkyg]

The drives may need to be re-initialized.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it possible that SeaTools was actually doing a "Secure Erase" rather than "write random data", or "write zeros" to erase them?

If it was, I'm not sure if it's safe to pull power / shut down the drives, if they are in the middle of that, even if you closed the program that initiated the procedure. (The remainder is drive-controlled.)

I've never tried to interrupt a Secure Erase, so I have no idea what state that would leave the drive in. If it were "smart" (pardon the pun), then perhaps, it would simply internally re-start the Secure Erase where it left off, and not accept Host commands, until it was finished.

 

[XavierMace]

Does DISKPART still see anything on those drives?

 

[tracerbullet]

Do you have an external dock to try them in? It might be the SATA controller on the board, or its drivers, that's giving you some trouble.

I do have an external dock, but when the drives are in it they are not seen by Seatools. This was even before any of this other stuff started. As soon as they were plugged into the motherboard they were recognized. I might try this again though, see what Windows or AOMEI do, if they can see them, might help speed things up to get them off the motherboard.

The drives may need to be re-initialized.

I wondered about this but it was such a crazy long process for any of the programs to even see them or try this out. Windows Disk Manager and / or AOMEI both takes several minutes to load up, and every single button push takes several more minutes for a response. I'm not exaggerating that it could be a 30 minute process just to try this. But it's a good idea, I'll give it a go and just try to have some patience.

Is it possible that SeaTools was actually doing a "Secure Erase" rather than "write random garbage", or "write zeros" to erase them?

If it was, I'm not sure if it's safe to pull power / shut down the drives, if they are in the middle of that, even if you closed the program that initiated the procedure. (The remainder is drive-controlled.)

I've never tried to interrupt a Secure Erase, so I have no idea what state that would leave the drive in. If it were "smart" (pardon the pun), then perhaps, it would simply internally re-start the Secure Erase where it left off, and not accept Host commands, until it was finished.

This could be huge, then. It crossed my mind that they were acting so funky because they were in their own little world. I'll see if I can research this. I'd love to just leave them powered for the day, or days, and suddenly they pop back up erased and otherwise back to normal. If I can't get anywhere above I'll try this. I might actually just try it first, walking away with them powered is far easier than waiting out the programs, if they even can be waited out.


Thanks folks! I have a few things to try and am feeling a little more optimistic..

 

[tracerbullet]

Does DISKPART still see anything on those drives?

I have not tried, good suggestion. Maybe I can do this the old fashioned way. I know the BIOS picked up the drives, after that I was intent on software to erase them. I can try this as well.

 

[EXCellR8]

yes, just run DISKPART in CMD and then use list disk to see if they even show up.

as a side note, if you place the drives in the dock and they are not detected by DISK PART or gParted, then the dock might just not support the size of the drives. the firmware on the dock itself may be unable to manage such large drives etc.

 

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Thanks for all the suggestions. I tried a combination of things - DISKPART did see the drives but wouldn't let me do anything with them. Windows Disk Manager, given enough time, eventually quit with the spinning icon and showed them as well.

I pulled up SeaTools and began the process on another drive installed and watched what it did. Though I selected the "Erase" button up top, and did not select the "Sanitize" option through the scroll lists (same as the last time w/ these 10TB drives in question), it did indeed begin to perform that process. Looking up some info on that, it indicates that the process does indeed continue even after a power cycle! This could explain them being inaccessible and even why SeaTools itself didn't show a status change on them after a long time, perhaps because it wasn't actually in control at that point. Just a guess.

So I let it run all night and this morning one of the drives was able to be initialized and behaved normally. I have a feeling the other 2 need to finish the same internally controlled process and will get there as well. I'll update one more time but I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

Thanks again!

 

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They all came back and all are fine. The erasing method just needed enough time to wrap up, even through a reboot.

Thanks guys for the ideas and help!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Veeery iiiinteresting.

 

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Sanitize Overwrite Settings: "Warning! Sanitize commands will continue after a power cycle!"

Says this when you select the Sanitize option. Doesn't say it for the "normal" erase, but seemed to do the same thing.