Hard drive lock or disabled, can not access hard drive

I belong to a non profit organization and we receive a few hundred hard drives IDE and SATA. These can from different a county departments, they show up in the bios with the hard drives information. When using a Windows xp system disk to load the OS and when we get to the deleting partion part it reads "cannot access the hard drive. We suspect the I.T. guys ran some sort of software to either disable, lock or maybe damage them. My question is, if the hard drives are lock how can we unlock them or make them usable. Thanks for any advise or help.

 

Hi and welcome!

You could try to wipe the drive by doing a zero out with dd on a bootable linux disc and see if that fixes the problem. Sounds like the disk may be encrypted.

 

Hi,
Most probably, the encryption software created a special partition, which Windows doesn't know how to deal with. Delete this partition and start afresh:

1) Right-click on Computer in Start Menu, select "Manage"
2) Select "Disk Management" from left pane, under "Storage"
3) Select the right partition (volume) on the right disk from the list of disks (bottom right pane) This is very important to make sure you select a correct disk/partition, the partition in question shouldn't have a drive letter, and most probably would be listed as RAW type.
4) Rigtht-click and select "Delete Volume"
5) Create a new one on the same disk, with the maximum size (should be the default). You could format it as NTFS, or FAT32, depending on your preference.

hope that this helps!!:major

 

You could also try DBaN.....

https://www.google.com/url?q=http:/...ds-cse&usg=AFQjCNEEMLOLcDb6LLG6_PTThzj0ORLKtw

About DBAN.... (it is FREE)

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is free erasure software designed for consumer use. DBAN users should be aware of some product limitations, including:

.No guarantee that data is removed
.Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)
.No customer support

DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. This method can help prevent identity theft before recycling a computer. It is also a solution commonly used to remove viruses and spyware from Microsoft Windows installations. DBAN prevents all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. It does not provide users with a proof of erasure, such as an audit-ready erasure report.

 

iain.t, I'll try both your suggestions. I do want to ask a question, are you saying to install the hard drive as a slave drive then click on "my computer" and follow your steps? I will also try DBAN.

pclover thanks for your input, I will also try Ubuntu, or is there another linux software I can download that will zero out the drive?

 

If it was done as a hardware lock, nothing is going to fix that one. Only thing to do, is punch holes in those drives, to destroy the platters, and toss in a recycling bin, to go to your electronics recycle company, that picks up bad or faulty non-repairable equipment.