ATA Secure Erase applied to a WD My Passport Ultra 2TB

Hello,

I’m new in this forum and my first question is simple: Can I perform a Secure Erase (through the USB interface, removing the drive from its enclosure is OUT OF QUESTION) to a My Passport Ultra 2TB (with hardware encryption)?

I boot the system with the well-known Linux distribution ‘Parted Magic’, which is able to do this task, but when I select my USB external drive, it shows a notice indicating that performing a secure erase to an USB drive is dangerous and might brick the drive.

The reason to do this is that my drive fell down to the floor and now has 2 slow zones near sectors 6,500,000 and 9,200,000. There are no bad/reallocated sectors however and the rest of the disk is OK.

I’ve tried everything: Zero-fill and/or refresh the drive with HDD Regenerator, Drevitalize and Hard Disk Sentinel without success, through USB 2 and 3 ports. My last chance is the ATA Secure Erase. Hard Disk Sentinel tells that this drive is capable but the Parted Magic warning is worrying me.

Anyone has performed a Secure Erase to an external drive through its drive enclosure (USB interface)?

As far I know, Parted Magic uses hdparm to do the secure erase and Parted Magic version is the latest (august 14, 2014).

Thank you in advance and regards

Hello,

I have never tried this. But the reason your drive is slow might be due to a failure in some mechanical part. If your drive was dropped it is possible that it will no longer work the same again. I have a Passport that has been dropped several times and has no issues. But I think that is just luck.

Hello,

I know those 2 slow zones are small and always are the same. It’s odd that the remaining disk (about 98%) is perfectly fine. So I’m pretty sure these zones have no delays due to the USB nature. If it was a mechanical failure, more slow zones would appear, right?

I also think if WD implements an ATA secure erase is for something, but this is the big question:

If I brick the drive applying an ATA secure erase, is this covered by warranty?

Thank you again for your help, much appreciated.

Please, can anyone reply to my last question?

HiddenUser wrote:

Hello,

 

I know those 2 slow zones are small and always are the same. It’s odd that the remaining disk (about 98%) is perfectly fine. So I’m pretty sure these zones have no delays due to the USB nature. If it was a mechanical failure, more slow zones would appear, right?

 

I also think if WD implements an ATA secure erase is for something, but this is the big question:

 

If I brick the drive applying an ATA secure erase, is this covered by warranty?

 

Thank you again for your help, much appreciated.

If you are planning to do a warranty replacement, there is no need to do a secure erase.  When the failed drives are brought into our warranty centers, they are run through machines that check whether the drives are mechanically failed or not, and the data is securely wiped at the same time. There are no machines in the centers for reading or storing data. 

Thanks Bill_S for your reply, but I’m not asking that. I’m asking  if I brick the drive applying an ATA secure erase, is this incident covered by warranty.

In other words, I don’t know if the WD service center would approve a RMA for a drive rendered useless by the user (not physically, of course). In addition, I think that if WD implement the ATA Secure Erase on their portable drives is because this feature is FULLY SUPPORTED, right?

Regards

I’m not sure what you mean by a ATA secure erase.  If you’re erasing the drive, even using software that permanently erases data, there should never be an issue with bricking the drive.  That only happens when a firmware update goes bad.  And a firmware failure does not affect drive warranty. 

The reason I posted what I did previously is because you asked about your warranty.  If the drive is fine, then any secure erase should not affect the drive function.  You may need to re-initialize and reformat afterward, but there shouldn’t be any negative affect on the physical drive itself.  So, with you being concerned about bricking the drive, it makes me wonder what you’re attempting to do.

Thank you again.

I’m not a newbie, I’m a computer engineer and I perfectly know what is a format, a low level format (also called “zero-fill”) and a simple multipass wipe. These methods are SOFTWARE methods, and of course they are not harmful for a HEALTHY drive (for a sick drive the result might be unpredictable though). I’m referring to a special HARDWARE method not very known by people (like you).

The ATA Secure Erase is a hardware method built in the firmware and it’s triggered with special tools like hdparm. This erase method is absolutely independent from computer software, the entire procedure is executed by the drive. Because of the very low level nature of this method, there is a small risk of bricking the firmware when used with USB drives. Since this drive is a bit more complex than a normal USB drive for its embedded harware encryption, I’m a bit worried. In addition, this procedure requires to set an ATA password to lock the drive. This password goes beyond WD SmartWare protection, is set at hardware level. If anything goes wrong, the drive would be absolutely INACCESSIBLE, even for BIOS (only hard disk professionals or WD can recover the drive).

If you want further information about this procedure, please read THIS.

With this information, please reply again to my last question: is this covered by my warranty?

Thank you very much for your help and patience.

If you’re not physically damaging the drive, then no there shouldn’t be any issue with your warranty. 

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