[ale] OT could a metal detector in shipping process do this?

[mike at trausch.us]

On 01/30/2012 09:19 AM, Wolf Halton wrote:
> So if the drives were degaussed, they wouldn't even have shown up as
> "Unformatted Disc" when plugged into a computer.  I didn't do the next
> step, and attempt to format the drives.  I just sent them back to the
> shipper.  They were the ones who said they had put the data on the discs.
> Thanks for the very detailed explanation.

I could be wrong, but I believe a degausser would render the low-level
formatting to be invalid also, which would cause the drive to simply
return read errors (after probably very long timeouts) instead of doing
anything useful.  These days, only the manufacturer would be able to
restore the drive to functionality (or someone who has the capability of
instructing the drive controller to perform a low-level format, if the
drive controller even has that functionality anymore).  Even with the
prices today, it's probably more worth it to replace the drive.

A drive that can be read, but where all the sectors are full of zero
bytes, is probably simply a new, never-before-used drive (or a drive
that the previous owner overwrote with an endless stream of zero bytes).

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

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