How many people have seen a normal SATA hard drive that passes the usual 
diagnostics, allows you to read all the data without any issues but cannot 
be written to or even "low level formatted" by its own manufacturer's 
diagnostics disk?

Ta

Bitstring , from the 
wonderful person Eddison Fudford-Honeyhall  
said
>How many people have seen a normal SATA hard drive that passes the usual
>diagnostics, allows you to read all the data without any issues but cannot
>be written to or even "low level formatted" by its own manufacturer's
>diagnostics disk?

Depends who the manufacturer is, and what diagnostic disk. IBM (aka 
Hitachi) used to ship diagnostic software which would ONLY work on the 
motherboard's basic IDE ports - any sort of add on controller (IDE, 
SATA, whatever) and the disk wouldn't even show up.

-- 
GSV   Three Minds in a Can
12,169 Km walked. 2,402 Km PROWs surveyed. 43.4% complete.