Hmmm.... Boot and Nuke is currently telling me it has 71 hours to go. Is this normal or is it a wash?

We don't know the size, the rotational speed (probably 7200rpm) the or the wipe method you're using so it's hard to attempt to guess.

Did you use a default like DoD short? Or even quicker, the "quick erase" if the controller supports it (which, possibly not if it's IDE). How many rounds? Verification on or off?

"Autonuke" should do a single round 3-pass DoD wipe, verifying on the last pass. Also, it should show how many KB/sec it's writing. Does that output approach the known specs of that model hard drive?

Wiping sector 0 should be the only thing necessary as it would wipe out the partition table.

jmarsh wrote on 2020-07-23, 21:29:

Wiping sector 0 should be the only thing necessary as it would wipe out the partition table.

Cool, how do I do that?

Also, if DBaN has already gone more than even .01%, it's probably done the job.

I'm currently using Parted Magic to write zeros over the entire HDD, it claims an ETA of around 2 hours. We'll see what happens.

Surface testing a drive that old before using it is not a bad idea anyway. Filling it with zeros will accomplish that .

Run few minutes on DBAN or like then it is now destroyed enough so you can redo the partition after that.

Cheers,

IMO, there is a big difference between wiping a partition and just erasing it. If you just want to erase the current partition to reuse the drive then most partition tools should be able to do that (even Windows' diskpart) because you just need to erase the first few kB of the drive to accomplish that. However, wiping it is (for me, at least) completely erasing the partition and all the information it contains without any hope of ever it being recovered. That is usually done if you are going to trash/give away/sell the drive. That requires writing over all the drive several times (it takes a long time, depending on the drive size). Now, which one do you want to do?

FATX partition is used only by Xbox. You should be able to wipe the partition with almost any good tool unless someone locked it. Have grabbed many xbox HD's from older ones and reused them in other systems so it can be done using most standard tools unless it is locked then you need a good Linux tool (not a DOS or Windows tool) like Gparted, GNU Parted, KDE or Gnome. Except for Gparted you will need a bootable linux CD like Ubunto.
added: have never tried to wipe the USB add-on drives connected thru USB, always removed the actual HD from the HD case and connected it directly to SATA controller on my garage-lab PC. Added: curious, what size drive is it ? and Is it from an Xbox 360 ?

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-07-23, 21:53:

jmarsh wrote on 2020-07-23, 21:29:

Wiping sector 0 should be the only thing necessary as it would wipe out the partition table.

Cool, how do I do that?

S0Kill (Spur0Kill; German for Track0Kill) on DOS can do that, too. It uses BIOS interface (int13h) only and works with any media.
So far I was unable to kill any device physically with it, also. Thusly, I assume it uses high-level access only. 😀
- It can also wipe the whole disk, if the heads/sectors setting is changed.
Re: IDE to Compact Flash as MS-DOS boot drive.

Horun wrote on 2020-07-24, 03:02:

FATX partition is used only by Xbox. You should be able to wipe the partition with almost any good tool unless someone locked it. Have grabbed many xbox HD's from older ones and reused them in other systems so it can be done using most standard tools unless it is locked then you need a good Linux tool (not a DOS or Windows tool) like Gparted, GNU Parted, KDE or Gnome. Except for Gparted you will need a bootable linux CD like Ubunto.
added: have never tried to wipe the USB add-on drives connected thru USB, always removed the actual HD from the HD case and connected it directly to SATA controller on my garage-lab PC. Added: curious, what size drive is it ? and Is it from an Xbox 360 ?

Yeah, it's from my original Xbox, and yeah, now that I think about it, I'm sure it's locked. It's an 8gb drive. Does Parted Magic have a way to unlock the drive? It's a Linux program on the Ultimate Boot CD, which I have. I softmodded my Xbox, it has a 120 gb drive in it now, so I don't really need the original anymore, hence thinking I could perhaps use it to get a bit more space on my dos machine.

I am fairly sure used Gparted on a locked 10GB from old Xbox IIRC but may be wrong or maybe have been lucky, the only other locked drive I was able to cure was a 500Gb from a TIVO last year both took a few extra steps and unfortunately did not make notes (dumb me!). Most X and T drives are not locked in a way that requires any specially tools. Wish I could be more help.

Horun wrote on 2020-07-25, 02:46:

I am fairly sure used Gparted on a locked 10GB from old Xbox IIRC but may be wrong or maybe have been lucky, the only other locked drive I was able to cure was a 500Gb from a TIVO last year both took a few extra steps and unfortunately did not make notes (dumb me!). Most X and T drives are not locked in a way that requires any specially tools. Wish I could be more help.

'Spose I could just hotswap it on the Xbox and unlock it with Chimp. Taking that thing apart is a pain, hence why I haven't yet done it. Thanks anyway!

Can you hook it up to a newer windows machine and use diskpart?

All you need to run is:
Diskpart
List disk
Select disk (whatever number the disk is)
Clean
Create partition primary

If clean won't clear it out, then you definitely need some special utility to unlock it.

Really, is all that fuss really necessary ? Why not Just wipe track 0 ?
DOS is the ideal platform for that, it does neither block that special track, nor the boot sectors.
On other platforms, anti virus programs and what not try to guard track 0.
- Acronis Drive Cleanser also has a DOS-based version ("safe mode") just in case.

Anyway, maybe the HDD is indeed locked. I encountered a HDD locking program waay back in the 90s.
Ran it on my 286 with an 80 MB Conner HDD. It worked, I could nolonger write/delet data. Must have been an ATA command.

However, if XBOX 1 HDDs are really locked, then why was there that rumor about a 3rd world country
in which old XBOXes were being stripped apart for their HDDs ?

I nolonger remember the details, but it was related to old XP machines that were still in common use and fitted with these HDDs.
The only thing I remember is, that the HDDs were 8 to 20GB in size which was fine for XP (needs ca. 1,5GB).

Edit: Sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude. 😅

My more recent PC is all sata and the drive is pata, so that's out. Also, DOS recognizes that the drive exists but can't see the partition at all, can't add or remove. Again, I'm sure it's locked to the Xbox. I know now how to unlock it, but I'm really not keen to do hotswapping at the moment. Chronic fatigue is no fun. No worries! Thank you everyone for the advice, in the meantime I might just delete Daggerfall until I actually feel like playing it again, or just play Daggerfall Unity instead. Wheee!

- Tom

EDIT: I should mention that I ran a whole bunch of drive wiping/partition destroying softwares on the drive, and still DOS and Win98 can't do a thing with it.

EDIT AGAIN: Hotswapping the drive means disassembling either my Win98 or DOS machine for a power splitter, digging out the right bits for the Xbox screws, disassembling the whole thing, booting up with it open, after plugging in the power splitter, unplugging the Xbox DVD (CD) drive, plugging in the hard drive, booting chimp, unlocking the drive, putting everything back the way it was. More work than it's worth for 2gb more space right now. Hoorah.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-07-25, 05:30:

Really, is all that fuss really necessary ? Why not Just wipe track 0 ? DOS is the ideal platform for that, it does neither bloc […]
Show full quote

Really, is all that fuss really necessary ? Why not Just wipe track 0 ?
DOS is the ideal platform for that, it does neither block that special track, nor the boot sectors.
On other platforms, anti virus programs and what not try to guard track 0.
- Acronis Drive Cleanser also has a DOS-based version ("safe mode") just in case.

Anyway, maybe the HDD is indeed locked. I encountered a HDD locking program waay back in the 90s.
Ran it on my 286 with an 80 MB Conner HDD. It worked, I could nolonger write/delet data. Must have been an ATA command.

However, if XBOX 1 HDDs are really locked, then why was there that rumor about a 3rd world country
in which old XBOXes were being stripped apart for their HDDs ?

I nolonger remember the details, but it was related to old XP machines that were still in common use and fitted with these HDDs.
The only thing I remember is, that the HDDs were 8 to 20GB in size which was fine for XP (needs ca. 1,5GB).

Edit: Sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude. 😅

No worries, you didn't come off as rude to me, anyhow!

You can use Linux's dd:

1. Download a linux distro http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ comes to mind.
2. Boot from livecd/usb with only the hdd attached.
3. List all storage

1$ cat /proc/partitions
2
3major minor  #blocks  name
4   8        0  xxxxxxxx sda
5   8        1     xxxxxxxx sda1
6   8       16    xxxxxxxx  sdb
7   8       17   xxxxxxxx  sdb1

4. Then use dd to wipe to first 20mb of the drive usually sdb (sda usually is boot drive)

1$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=20

That should eliminate any partition data.

However if it does not, you can try to increase the count to eg: 100,1000.
If you leave out the count, it will fill the whole disk with zeroes. (last resort)

Good luck getting it wiped.