Would really appreciate any pointers with this one as I've tried everything I can think of. I've got this really old IDE 60GB disk that I'm trying to securely wipe and then dispose of / sell / give away. I've got as far as formatting it in windows and now it's showing as unallocated space in Computer Management. I'm not sure what is/was on the disk, but I want a little more of a secure format than the windows quick format! The disk now won't initialise either using MBR or GPT - I get the error "the request could not be completed because of an i/o device error" when doing either.
I've tried the following:
1. As my main goal is just to ensure the data is gone, even if I can't bring it back to life, I've tried using "boot and nuke" on it but my PC won't post with this disk connected as far as I can tell - I see no splash screen, just a black screen and a white cursor. If I connect the IDE drive to the PC once boot and nuke is already running, the computer freezes. It also makes windows a bit grumpy when it's connected - the 'storage' page in computer management takes about 5 mins to show when this drive is connected.
2. Checked the disk with Hard Disk Sentinel which reports the drive is healthy and is not security protected.
3. Tried installing W10 directly on to it to see if that would make it usable and not crash everything, but alas you can't install W10 on to a drive that is connected by USB. Ah yes, my motherboard doesn't have IDE so I bought an IDE to USB adaptor from a competitor shop. This may be the culprit for the I/O error...
4. Connected it to my macbook (USB again) to see if that would see it and allow me to format it. MacOS doesn't even see it in Disk Utility.
Shall I just run a drill bit through it multiple times, recycle it and forget about it?
I've tried the following:
1. As my main goal is just to ensure the data is gone, even if I can't bring it back to life, I've tried using "boot and nuke" on it but my PC won't post with this disk connected as far as I can tell - I see no splash screen, just a black screen and a white cursor. If I connect the IDE drive to the PC once boot and nuke is already running, the computer freezes. It also makes windows a bit grumpy when it's connected - the 'storage' page in computer management takes about 5 mins to show when this drive is connected.
2. Checked the disk with Hard Disk Sentinel which reports the drive is healthy and is not security protected.
3. Tried installing W10 directly on to it to see if that would make it usable and not crash everything, but alas you can't install W10 on to a drive that is connected by USB. Ah yes, my motherboard doesn't have IDE so I bought an IDE to USB adaptor from a competitor shop. This may be the culprit for the I/O error...
4. Connected it to my macbook (USB again) to see if that would see it and allow me to format it. MacOS doesn't even see it in Disk Utility.
Shall I just run a drill bit through it multiple times, recycle it and forget about it?
thanks