Formatting unused ZFS disk to ext4 or NTFS - disk not recognized

[pechkin000]

Hi,
I apologize if this has been asked before, I did a search and couldn't find anything on this.
I am slowly replacing WD Green drives with Reds in one of my Freenas boxes. So I did the replacement with the first disk. Now I have a WD Green that was part of an 8 disk Raidz3 array. I would like to format it and use it for something else, the problem is the disk is not recognized both under windows or Linux. I am connecting it via USB disk cradle, haven't tried connecting it directly to the MB with sata cable, but I doubt I will get different result.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can redo the partitioning/formatting for this disk?

Just to clarify, its not that the disk comes up with errors or unknown partition - it just doesn't register as a disk at all, Gparted doesn't see it and neither does Disk Manager in windows.
Thanks!

 

[gpsguy]

One way to do it would be to download a copy of dban (dban.org) and do a quick erase. Might take a bit, but it'll do the task.


Sent from my phone

 

[pechkin000]

One way to do it would be to download a copy of dban (dban.org) and do a quick erase. Might take a bit, but it'll do the task.


Sent from my phone

Thanks, I will give it a shot when I get back to work tomorrow.

 

[pechkin000]

@gpsguy so I tired dban, no dice, it sees it but says unrecognized device and doesn't give me an option to select it to be erased... Would anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[jlpellet]

I think that you do not want to erase it but rather look at a tool/option to kill the foreign (to Windows) partition. AFAIK, dban does not recognize ZFS partitions. However, I tried it myself & when I connected a ZFS disk to Win7Home via a USB adapter, it showed up in Control Panel > Computer Management > Disk Management as an additional Disk & I could delete the ZFS partitions by right-click then choose delete. I could then create NTFS basic or dynamic disk via the standard Win7 process Hope this helps.

 

[pechkin000]

UPDATE: So I connected it via sata and it got recognized by dban and its happily formatting it now. So if anyone else runs into it, use Sata.
thanks for the help @gpsguy