Registration of WD RE4 and SAS 2TB Drives on Dell 690

lawg8r

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Recently I purchased a dozen WD 2TB hard Drives from a US govt. surplus lottery, ten 2TB RE4 HDDs and two 2TB SAS HDDs. Drives are all less than three years old and were wiped prior to sale. I attempted to install each of them on a Dell 690 WS server (and a 490) however they don't appear in the OS Disk Manager window (Win XP). I tried various methods including using the on-board Dell Raid controller and the SAS controller Raid and nonRaid. Each try, the drives appear in the system Bios Screen (F2 on Dell) without an associated size, but do not appear in the OS Disk Manage window
I'm assuming the drives are set to RAID or signed as RAID, or whatever RAID, but I cannot reset them to Non-Raid for the OS. Two emails to WD have been unanswered. Any help would be sincerely appreciated, I went way overboard bidding on this lottery and really need to use these drives.
 
Solution
Even if they were set in a RAID, without the same RAID controller or if the RAID controller is not set to RAID mode they would be seen as individual disks, and will show up in the Disk Management window. If you plug one of the SATA drives into a desktop computer does it show up properly in Disk Management? (Just do this for testing to rule out the Dell Raid Controller)
 

TyrOd

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Well, it's possible that the drives were degaussed instead of written over to wipe them and the service area defining the drive's geometry was wiped as well.

In that case you may be screwed, because reconstructing the service area information may be impossible to do on your own.
 
Solution


^^Knows a lot more than I do. I suppose this is also possible, If that is the case would a firmware update on the drive fix said issue or no? For some reason I doubt it. Its not impossible to repair or change a drives geometry, (I modded a 160GB WD drive two 120GB for my Xbox) via firmware flashing and writing some data to the drive (to long ago to remember)
 

lawg8r

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Thanks for the reply SniperGod87.
Actually I suspect something like that, however, each drive had a certification/verification label that they very wiped of data under DoDxxxx standard and verified by two different ITs, I don't think magnetic degassing qualifies and the operator certainly couldn't verify the wipe if the system area data were destroyed. I hope anyway. Any other suggestions?
Also. we have tried several of the drives on other Dell Dimension desktops with similar results, these are older, 8400, 9450, etc. We have also upgraded our Work Stations to a Dell T7400, responded similarly. Currently, the firm is using the Win XP platform and will not upgrade until May. I cannot believe that twelve individual drives could fail in the exact same manner. The firm uses Dell brands exclusively.
 

TyrOd

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Repairing and updating the firmware and changing the drive's geometry is very different than restoring a completely wiped service area.

Only the manufacturer can feasibly do this by refurbishing the drive with new matching adaptives on the EEPROM as well.
 

lawg8r

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I think I am now in agreement that the only logical conclusion is that some of the drives were exposed to a gaussian magnetic field. Most probably, the drives were degaussed, as many of you have mentioned, instead of wiped according to DoD 5220.22-M, which would rendered them useless for continued service. Here is a lesson, drives retired from government service may not have been wiped according to the DoD spec even if they are labeled with a DoD compliant label and initialed. That was a fairly expensive lesson for us.
 

TyrOd

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it's a sad situation, but unfortunately the reality is that even the Federal government contracts commercial labs to do this, so there's always a third party involved that can mess things up.