Killdisk rendered external hard drive useless

Question

I used Killdisk to wipe a hard drive intending to clean it before selling.

I now cannot use the hard drive. Device Manager in Windows reports the "device is working properly"

It is connected using USB.

I have tried:

The drive (or maybe the record represents the bridge, not the drive itself) does show up under Windows in "My Computer" as a "Removable Disk".

Opening it results in "Please insert a disk into Removable Disk (G:)."
Attempting to format results in "There is no disk in drive G:. Insert a disk, and then try again."

Any ideas?

Does it happen to have a security lock code on it? (There's a "secure erase" command or something in the ATA standard... it might have used that option, although I'm not sure it has.) — user541686, May 19, 2011 at 1:25
Mehrdad, it is a standard hard drive in a standard enclosure. No security locks. — James, May 19, 2011 at 5:04
@James: Sorry, I meant a software lock, nothing to do with the enclosure. — user541686, May 19, 2011 at 5:07
Oh, sorry, no, nothing of the kind. The drive "contents" are 100% unallocated space. — James, May 19, 2011 at 5:09

Randolf Richardson · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-19 02:23:09Z

1

Try using a newer computer to set up your partitions on it -- some older BIOSes seem to prevent this from working.

answered May 19, 2011 at 2:23

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Randolf, what does the BIOS have to do with it? The hard drive is recognised on both computers, and they are both under 4 years old.
– James
May 19, 2011 at 5:03
@James: I'm not sure exactly what the BIOS has to do with it, but I suspect the BIOS because upgrading it in at least one instance resolved the problem for me for initializing and partitioning external USB mass storage devices.
– Randolf Richardson
May 20, 2011 at 17:01

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