Removing write protect from a seagate hard drive

[JD]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Alan Cox <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:29:44 -0700
> JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is there a system util to use to issue
> > a command to a hard drive to remove
> > write protect?
> > I had thought hdparm might do it, but
> > the man page makes no mention of such
> > feature in hdparm.
>
> SATA or some kind of USB thing ?
>
> If its SATA I'm not aware of a standard way to do it or of drives having
> the feature for that matter. Check for a jumper and also if its suddenely
> gone read-only perhaps its doing that because its failed ?
>
> What makes you think it's gone read only ?
>
> Alan


It is an eSATA 2 drive in external enclosure with eSATA2 host interface.
I now believe that the device state is being maintained in the kernel
(Driver???)
because of failure of disk to respond to host query to identify itself
or to  host
query to report it's DMA status??
Please have a look at the error messages I had posted at
http://www.sendspace.com/file/761te2

Guess I should download full kernel source and peruse the drivers code to see
if and where the read-only state is being set as a consequence of no response
to host's queries.