Hi,

I'm trying to RMA my 2 Samsung F1 1TB HDDs, and before I do that, I'm trying to secure erase the drives following instructions from here. The 1st one worked without any issues. The 2nd one stopped prematurely without any error message, and then subsequently cannot be detected by Linux fdisk. I tried rebooting and it now hangs at SATA detection at the POST screen. Once I remove the drive then it boots up properly. I've tried different SATA ports - same result.

Does anyone know why this is the case? Has the drive been somehow locked?

Can you see the problem HDD in you bios setup? If not, it's either not cabled correctly or it's dead.

I'm wondering if maybe you didn't hit DISCLAIMER #2 on the wiki guide you followed.

I can't even get to BIOS, because during HDD detection, it hangs at the port that the problem HDD is connected to.

And can't be the cable because I've tried it with different ports, and also tried a different HDD with the same cable.

Guess it's a good thing I'm getting it RMAed, though why would secure erase even cause this problem?

I would guess the drive either coincidentally died on you in the middle of the security erase procedure or you ran into the problem noted in rayfordj's post which bricked the drive. I assume the drives were being RMAed because of some encountered defect with the drive(s). What problems were you having with the drives before attempting to secure erase them?