Zeroed hd now unusable

I have a 60GB Maxtor hdd that I recently attempted to use as an upgrade to a softmodded xbox. I used xboxhdm to prep and lock the disc. Although the model number was supposed to be compatible, I got the "requires service" error every time I tried. So I gave up on that front and left the 10GB hdd on the xbox. I found out shortly after trying the 60GB that it was missing the two far left pins in the IDE pin array (or whatever it's called ).

Recently I came into possession of an external hdd enclosure, and decided to give it a try with the 60GB. I booted up xboxhdm again to unlock the hdd, and that seemed to work fine. I then put it in the enclosure and plugged the USB cable into my computer (running Kubuntu). I figured that /dev/sdb would pop up and I could use gparted to repartition it (since no OS can read the FATX fs), but gparted complained about a missing disk label. When I tried to create one, it popped up an error saying it couldn't create the (msdos) disk label.

I then tried using the Windows disk management tool, like a lot of other websites have recommended, but the drive wouldn't even show up.

So I decided to zero my drive with linux (using dd and /dev/zero). Now it throws iput/output errors when I try to do things with it. Trying to fdisk /dev/sdb results in "Unable to read /dev/sdb". Trying to parted /dev/sdb and commanding "print" gives "Error: Unable to open /dev/sdb - unrecognised disk label.". And, of course, gparted is no help either with the disk label issue.

These issues being with the USB enclosure, I plugged the drive into my Windows desktop as a slave and booted an Xubuntu livecd I had lying about. Xubuntu won't even recognize a /dev/hdb. Only hda (main drive) and its three partitions and hdc (cd drive).

Plugging it back into the enclosure and trying to zero it again:


Is there anything I haven't tried? Is the disc fried from my various direct manipulations? As far as I can tell, the BIOS can see the drive fine, but the OSes can't.

http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Mounting ... ions_HOWTO

Thanks for the link, but it doesn't help. The only reason I mentioned the xbox fiasco was because it involved locking the disc, which might affect something. I've since zeroed the hdd, effectively erasing any (fatx) partitions and partition table that existed. But perhaps you didn't believe me:


Not that it proves anything, but there you go.

If I didn't believe you, I would have had said so. It's a long shot but maybe there is something on the Ultimate Boot CD that can be of some use.

Holy crap!

While I was downloading the ISO for that UBCD, I decided to play around with jumper settings, harmless as that would be. Slave and master settings don't help at all in the enclosure, but I set it to CS, and I now have access to create a disc label in parted. What's more, gparted just successfully created a partition on the drive.

Darned jumpers

That's good to know. I never would have thought of that and I use one of those enclosures fairly regularly.

Oh wow.
I'm definately bookmarking this one.