Problem with DBAN and write-protected sector

madad2005

New Member
Hi,

I was attempting to format my hard disk using DBAN. One partition on my hard disk was password protected by muppet here forgot the password so I decided to just do a fresh install and be done with it. When I ran DBAN in verbose mode, however, it detects the HDD IDE drive and then gives the message 'write protected disk => 1'. It then stalls and will not continue. I know it works cos I have ran it before on my laptop with no problems. I then used Win XP Cd to format the disk. This was a bit weird cos it didn't ask me for anything, just started installing windows onto the disk. I rebooted, checked with DBAN (no luck), then managed to format the disk using the XP cd. I then tried DBAN again (no luck again - still write protected), so I formatted again using XP. Guess what? I tried DBAN again, with no luck. It still detects the drive as being write-protected.

Is there anyway to override the write-protection? Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
 

madad2005

New Member
Sorry. It should of read 'but muppet here'. The term 'muppet' here is used in the derogatory sense as in you would call someone a muppet if he/she did something incredibily stupid. I did that hence I called myself a muppet. Please ignore it. :)
 

dajhorn

Member
DBAN does not override this kind of glitch.

If you accidentally used an ATA command to protect part of the disk with a password, or if you used an ATA command to wipe the disk, then you must use the vendor diagnostic program to do an ATA wipe and unlock the disk.

You probably have a Western Digital product. If not, let me know the manufacturer and model of your disk.
 

madad2005

New Member
It is a Maxtor DiamondMax9+ 120GB. I am going to give it another try this evening and see if it will work now that it has been formatted twice over using the XP disc.

Cheers
 
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