Hi,
A 501(3)c that I am affiliated with received a donation of several hundred ~80G SATA/PATA drives the other day. They have allegedly (?) been bulk erased. I was asked, today, if there is any way to make the drives serviceable, again.
I have not seen the drives or had a chance to play with any of them. As "proof" that they were bulk erased, I am told each drive bears a label: ERASED Magnetic data is completely erased. Erased product can't be reused or repaired.
When *I* take a drive out of service, I "bulk erase" them (after "electronically" overwriting the existing data) and then subject them to the 500G drop test :> But, I'll admit I have never *tried* to recover data from a drive thusly (ahem) "treated".
My initial response to them was "recycle them, they're trash". Was I too hasty?
I would imagine all the servo information, low level formatting, bad sector table, etc. are gone or corrupted so putting these back into service would require "special factory tools"...