Help with removing decrypted partitions on two HDD's

Hardware Hub Storage
,
41

Did you not read how we were going back and forth on this? lol

I know how to read outputs, so don't worry about that :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
42

Admittedly i was tired when i replied so it looks like i missed it lol

1 Like
43

How goes the testing?

44

The results are you need either the master password or the User password to unlock the drive.
I wasn't able to set a master password if the user password is already set, so you'll need the default master password.

Sometime you can get the following error, but the command succeeds (this happened one time for me):
SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 04 51 40 00 21 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

...so you must check with hdparm -I /dev/sdX to see if it changes from locked to not locked. It's probably worth trying the password "Seagate" with 25 spaces again. There is also one other Seagate default master password you can try:

hdparm --user-master m --security-unlock "SeaGate........................." /dev/sdX

If neither of those work, it is possible to attach to a Seagate drive via a special TTL serial connection and potentially recover/reset the passwords, but this is not straightforward.

1 Like
45

Ok, I'll try this again tomorrow, if it fails I'm just going to trash the drives and tell her that they'll need to purchase a new drive or find one to operate the laptop.

Thanks again for all your help on this!

46

if you are able to get a copy of MHDD you might be able to read the HPA (Host Protected Area) of the disks and dump them as bin files, then I could extract the Passwords for you or you could do it yourself even.

Long ago I once wrote a guide for doing all that. It wasn't the greatest guide. Maybe I'll clean it up again some time.

(I had to cheat and rename the pdf to a .ppt to make it upload on the forum, just rename it to .pdf again to open it)

Extract ATA Passwords.pdf.pptx (438.3 KB)

Here's a link to MHDD: http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Here's another tool that should be able to unlock Toshiba drives: http://www.toshibastorage.com/hddpassword/docs/HDD_Password_Tool_Windows_Setup_AMERICAS.exe

@admins Might aswell allow PDF's since ppt and pptx are allowed. Or disable those too entirely.

Also Good lawd does discourse really do extension based file checks? No header magic number/mime type inspection. GG

47

I believe that technique will only work for Western Digital hard drives. It relies on Vendor Specific ATA commands.
For Seagate (as we have here), a TTL level serial connection to the drive PCB is needed. For Fujitsu, I don't know...

48

Ah crap, you are right. I forgot that.
I might have another trick somewhere for Seagate disks. I have so many of those, I must have made a tool for it at some point.

49

Hey guys,

Sorry for the late reply, after hours of searching for answers I've come to the conclusion that she will just need to buy a new drive, it definitely beats (after the fact) trying to re-purpose the encrypted drives that came with it.

Although she is not fond of it I'll try to help her pick one. Again, thank you all for your dedicated help on this topic, if no one else wishes to further contribute, this thread can be closed.