Secure Erase causes HDD to stop being detected

[Goi]

Hi,

I'm trying to RMA my 2 Samsung F1 1TB HDDs, and before I do that, I'm trying to secure erase the drives following instructions from here. The 1st one worked without any issues. The 2nd one stopped prematurely without any error message, and then subsequently cannot be detected by Linux fdisk. I tried rebooting and it now hangs at SATA detection at the POST screen. Once I remove the drive then it boots up properly. I've tried different SATA ports - same result.

Does anyone know why this is the case? Has the drive been somehow locked?

 

[Old Hippie]

Something got trashed.

You could try hot plugging the drive after boot or with a USB connection but I'm not familiar with any fixes.

I had an SSD that failed while using HDDErase.

 

[Mark R]

Many secure erase utilities password-protect the drive, before erasure and then unlock it after. This way if the erase doesn't complete the drive is inaccessible until unlocked (usually by rerunning the erase utility and letting it finish).

Unfortunately, some BIOSs are buggy and will crash during POST if they detect a password locked drive.

The drive may be toast, as suggested above - but it could also be a buggy BIOS not knowing what to do with the drive. You could try it on a different PC and see what happens.