[ale] OT: Erasing a toasted drive

[Michael Trausch]

Scott Castaline wrote:
>
> The last I've seen of those capabilities were back in the days of the 
> Seagate ST225/250.
> 

Yeah -- those tricks may not work but there are other low-level 
mechanisms that can be used to erase as much as the head can move to 
erase.  That's (part of) the reason that taskfile access was implemented 
in the kernel, AFAIK.  IIRC, this came at about the close of the 2.4 
kernel (perhaps backported from 2.5?).  But I don't recall, so none of 
that data may be valid whatsoever.

	- Mike