Greetings I was prepping a friends drive and was using Parted Magic to blank it. It is in an HP Pavilion G7. A secure erase was initiated, but cancelled part way through. Now, I am unable to do anything to the drive - partition programs show the space as unallocated but don't let me create any partition tables. Booting with my Easy2Boot key says something about the HDD not being there. It passes quick checks and shows up in the BIOS. Using the secure erase utility in Parted Magic says it is unable to erase the drive. Is there anything I can do to reset this drive? T
There should be a large red warning label that appears as soon as you open the "Erase Disk" utility in Parted Magic, telling users "Once you initiate any erase procedure listed here, LET IT COMPLETE! NEVER cancel the operation!". I'm about 99% certain that all of the options offered under "Erase Disk" are just different forms of the Linux "dd" command, which should NEVER be cancelled. One more very important thing: I advise against entering a SATA secure password when prompted to do so - just leave the default entry "NULL" in place. Did you or did you not do this?
Never changed the password And I didn't stop the process...don't ask me how, but I found a cat had wandered onto the laptop while I was doing something else and when I came back the process was stopped. Anyway, I tried using ZU and couldn't get it to unlock the drive so I think I'l just have to buy her a new drive. T
secure erase usualy does set a pass then erases it. ive had to use zu.exe in a non dell desktop to erase a laptop drive.. like gigabyte boards. it gave NoCRQ error. likely its recoverable.. ask in hddguru.com