What free tool can erase the HPA on a WD drive?

Hello everyone,

I’m new to this community forum!

I did a search in Google for my questions that was on this forum. I’m hoping someone can answer them anyway?

What free tool will do both remove the HPA, and erase the entire drive at the slowest possible method? I’m using DBAN. I don’t think that will erase the HPA. After erasing the HPA, would it be possible to go on my way by partitioning my drive, and reinstalling the OS? Will the HPA be setup automatically? I just want to start all over from scratch. I can’t get answers on no matter what forum I try.

My WD is on SATA 1. I have a eMachines PC desktop.

ATA WDC WD1001FALS-0

I hope that helps.

Thank you,

Current ATA hard drives support the ATA Secure Erase command. Once it receives this command, the drive will use its own internal mechanisms to securely erase all data. Some drives also support an ATA Enhanced Secure Erase, in which case any reallocated sectors will also be wiped.

The following utility makes use of these features, and optionally allows the HPA to be erased as well.

HDDerase:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/external-link/?link=http%3A%2F%2Fcmrr.ucsd.edu%2Fpeople%2FHughes%2FSecureErase.shtml

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt