Are my hard drives useless?

[MikeL5280]

My friend from church gave me an old DROBO with a small pile of hard drives. I have no need of a RAID system so I plan to sell it with some of the drives.
I bought a USB adapter with external power supply to use some of the leftover drives as external backups. They are SATA drives.
When I plug the USB in nothing is recognized. I can power the drive on and let it spin up first but no difference.
It doesn't show up in the file manager, lsusb, gparted, lsblk, or any other that I've tried so far.
I'm guessing the DROBO erased some kind of file system table of contents or master boot record or something.
I get the same result when I plug it in to the motherboard.
Can anyone help me set these drives up to be used like a normal USB drive?
The drive I'm looking for is a TOSHIBA 1T. The label also says HITACHI on it.
There is a SATA listing on Bus 007 Device 002...
I suppose the first step is to isolate everything USB aside from mouse and keyboard and retest.
I'll post the results.

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mikel@KingArthur:~$ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1        8:1    0 838.4G  0 part /run/timeshift/backup
└─sda2        8:2    0  88.5G  0 part /media/mikel/extra storage ta
sr0          11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
nvme0n1     259:0    0   477G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 476.4G  0 part /

and

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mikel@KingArthur:~$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 13fd:0840 Initio Corporation INIC-1618L SATA
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b05:18f3 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. AURA LED Controller
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04e8:6031 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd USB device
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 275d:0ba6  USB OPTICAL MOUSE 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1a2c:2124 China Resource Semico Co., Ltd USB Keyboard
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

[MikeL5280]

So I removed all drives and moved the mouse and keyboard connections to a different USB port.
Now the SATA listing under the lsusb command is gone and I can't get it back.
I found a site explaining the use of fdisk -l and tried it to no avail.

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mikel@KingArthur:~$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 003: ID 275d:0ba6  USB OPTICAL MOUSE 
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 1a2c:2124 China Resource Semico Co., Ltd USB Keyboard
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b05:18f3 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. AURA LED Controller
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

and

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mikel@KingArthur:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for mikel:            
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.96 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: PCIe SSD                                
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 2299D292-4BA8-4A34-AB05-4539F1641C01

Device           Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1    2048    1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624 1000214527 999163904 476.4G Linux filesystem

How do I get this drive to show up?

[ricardogroetaers]

Connected disk drive (data and power cable) in motherboard slot, normally must be configured in setup.

Unit inserted into an adapter or dock station (with power supply), usually just plug the usb cable into the computer.

If, in both cases, the disk drive does not appear in the Disks program or in Gparted (or similar), the drive is defective (defective drive board, misaligned or damaged heads, burnt chip, for example).

[MikeL5280]

Thanks Ricardogroetaers. When you say "configured in setup" you mean in the uefi bios, right?
I wouldn't put it past Tony to give me defective hard drives and play coy about it later.
I will look for another way to test them.

[DAMIEN1307]

My friend from church gave me an old DROBO with a small pile of hard drives.

I wouldn't put it past Tony to give me defective hard drives and play coy about it later.

That just sounds like a wonderful, loving, appreciative, statement towards your "friend" that you also say in the next breath that you "wouldn't put it past" him to do such and such, etc...Ya never know who is listening or observing, regarding the words and actions of others and their hearts inclinations...lol...DAMIEN

[ricardogroetaers]

1-Thanks Ricardogroetaers. When you say "configured in setup" you mean in the uefi bios, right?
2- I wouldn't put it past Tony to give me defective hard drives and play coy about it later.

1- right.
2- There is no bad intention of your friend. He just gave you something (lots of records) that he didn't use anymore. I assume he gave you no express assurance that they were all right. It's up to you to test them.
Good cordiality says:
If the horse is donated, don't check the teeth.

[dmfw]

Try and connect the drives, via. USB, to a Windows 7 - 10 computer. See if Win. sees the drive and offers to format it.

Also, I wonder if the messed with the drives low-level format.

[djph]

Well, RAID-enabled drives will be "goofy" when it comes to trying to look at them "normally" (e.g. via internal/external sata, or a USB adapter).

USB adapters can be weird, especially if they're drawing power from the USB bus as well. In the days of USB 2, usually you needed two ports just to accommodate the power requirements (although, better was the wallwart adapters). If you've got a USB-3 adapter, it's entirely possible it's expecting to be plugged into a USB3 port (which can typically supply more current).

Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of times, laptops undercurrent the USB ports anyway (e.g. even though the spec is up to 500 mA, the laptop will only ever provide 250mA, because BT adapters / mice / USB sticks / etc. all basically top out around there ... or at least they used to, been ages since I've bothered to check).

[RSaunders]

Drobo drives are low level formatted with an unique system, for use in the Drobo RAID device. You won't be able to read them with anything else.

I think your solution should be "Don't read them, reformat them". You'll need to put them in something that supports the format commands you want to use, presumably a USB box so you can GUID partition them and format them for EXT4.

I've worked for over a year trying to get a Drobo to work reliably on Mint. It's hard, and the lack of EXT4 support is a huge part of the problem. You can have the box simulate NTFS or HFS+, not Mint's favorite formats. Keep heading down the recycle-the-drives path you're on.