BT vision Hard Drive in external USB enclosure

[schmooser]

Hi everyone. I have a Seagate Pipeline HD ST3160316CS, firmware SC13 drive pulled from a Black BT vision box. It is in an external USB enclosure but I cannot format or access the disk (running Windows XP home edition, old laptop with USB 1.1 ports).
It appears in Device Manager under disk drives, but not visible through Computer Manager console.
- Various HDD tools (MHDD, HDD low level formatter, seagate tools, acronis true image) can all see the drive and access general info and even perform some tests, but I am unable to write to the drive or reformat it.

Has anyone successfully reformatted/used a drive such as this from a black BT vision box as an external?

Cheers

 

[fzabkar]

AIUI, such drives may be password protected for DRM reasons.

If so, then you should be able to see the drive's security status using one or more of your tools. HDAT2 is another utility that comes to mind.