tomexplodes wrote on 2020-07-25, 17:00:

My more recent PC is all sata and the drive is pata, so that's out. . Wheee!

- Tom

That's what a cheap USB to SATA/IDE adapter is useful for.

Akuma wrote on 2020-07-25, 17:28:

You can use Linux's dd: […]
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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

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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)

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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.

Already filled the whole disk with zeroes.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-07-25, 19:00:

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-07-25, 17:00:

My more recent PC is all sata and the drive is pata, so that's out. . Wheee!

- Tom

That's what a cheap USB to SATA/IDE adapter is useful for.

Finding a reliable one that is also cheap is a bit harder. Last two pack I ordered, one was DOA. Other one is still in my Xbox.

EDIT: Sorry, referring to SATA to IDE connector, not USB.

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-07-25, 17:00:

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 […]
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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.

If the drive is locked to the xbox, then you just need the xbox's eeprom.bin file and some software that can use that file to unlock the disk. I think hdat2 can do that.

tomexplodes wrote on 2020-07-25, 23:06:

Akuma wrote on 2020-07-25, 17:28:

You can use Linux's dd: […]
Show full quote

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

Copy code to clipboard

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)

Copy code to clipboard

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.

Already filled the whole disk with zeroes.

Well then the only option I have left is to use "ATA Secure erase" if that's applicable to your situation:
https://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html

did you find the answer, im the same situation but with a twist, I have the eeprom.bin and was able to unlock the HDD using xboxhdm 2.3 but after lock it back, the xbox was unable to read it same as the PC and when I try to unlock it is failing, I will assume the xboxhdm program did lock properly and now i have an unusable HDD.