WD 12TB Gold - Corrupted Firmware

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
#1

Hi All,

I have several 12T WD Gold WD121KRYZ that were in process of secure erasure. They were being erased for around 2 days (repeated writes). The next phase of the erasure was firmware based erasure and during this step the host PC failed.

Now, none of the drives will initialize, i can see them in disk management as a disk that needs initialization, but the step will not complete. Some of them are now making clicking sounds, some will not show in disk management at all. So i think their firmware got corrupted.

I dont care about the data on them at all, just need to be able to use them again.
Is there any way to reflash them back to factory?

Please tell me there is.

Thank you!!

#2

Bitlocker is less problematic

get the WD Lifeguard too and check the disk(s) to be sure they are ready for use

#3

If you’re talking about ATA Secure Erase, then for it to work, you need to setup disk password first. Usually disk password is asked by BIOS/UEFI upon boot. If you haven’t set the password and performed ATA Secure Erase, refer to your software documentation, which password did it set. After that, you can enter the password with hdparm utility or similar, and remove it.