I did something stupid in autopilot mode: Got several WD SATA SSDs I wanted to do a Secure Erase on and connected them to my system.
For convenience as a normie, I use the Linux distribution “Parted Magic” for this task (worked for me for years).
I forgot that I had also a spinning WD Red 4 TB HDD connected, that for some reason also showed up in the list of devices that support Secure Erase.
The SSDs finished fine, however the HDD progress said “x thousand minutes remaining”. There was absolutely no activity on the HDD and after a few hours I tried a soft reset - the HDD still showed up and was accessable.
However after a power cycle the UEFI is asking me for a HDD password for that drive and rejects everything.
Tried “password” (Parted Magic states that this is the default password it is using), not entering anything and even downloading the “WD Security” software (but that doesn’t recognize the drive).
The drive still shows up but trying to access it results in an I/O error.
I’m not interested in data recovery - is there a chance to be able to use the drive again?
It looks just like in that linked thread (supported/enabled/locked)
Just to be sure, copying & pasting these suggested commands into an admin terminal is prabably OK (the only thing to change is sdx to sdb, for example, whatever the drive is)?
hdparm --user-master m --security-unlock WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sdx
hdparm --user-master m --security-disable WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW /dev/sdx
I don’t get why the RED 4 TB even shows up in the Secure Erase tool - I’m used to only SATA SSDs showing up there (or not, if they need PSID reverting)
Is there any normie mistake in my try? (copied the text above directly from the terminal).
uefi passwords are a bios setting whether its for the system or the hard drive.
although wd used a special drive partitioning program and often set their own passwords program for it.
usually a low level format would wipe that crap out.
unless your the paranoid type setting a hdd password or boot password. is a royal pain in the arse for a technician when asked to repair a system.
they were designed to prevent unauthorized access by anyone but the original owner or the manufacturer of the drive.
If gparted still sees the partition it is still useable.
I use gparted all the time on any drive i save for reuse regardless of the model and manufacturer.
check out the bios uefi setting for password setting.
if there is a uefi password you will probably have to reset the bios to its default state. (blank password state)
So it looks like the secure erase was started, and part of that is to issue a password to lock the drive while erasing.
At the end of the erase, the drive unlocks.
It looks like the erase was interrupted, and drive still in locked status?
Last time I had that, the password had been set by the app issuing the erase command
so I needed to unlock it with the default password for the gnome-disks util.
As long as the drive is not frozen, you just need the correct password.
I see you tried wdc(repeated) from the page, but perhaps check the default password for the app that started the erase?
I think in an early post, you mentioned password was password?
I’d check from the app side, rather than the drive side, or the bios side.
As per the parted magic guide:
The fourth column displays the temporary security password. This does not do what you may think. It is best to leave it “password” unless you know what you are doing. Do not ever change it to “NULL” or empty (blank).
near the bottom there is a recovery thign if problems wile erasing
Yeah, a field in the Secure Erase tool prominentliy states that the password it is setting (and seems to be an industry-default is “password”) and to only change that if you know what you’re doing (never touched it). With this “password” I’ve never encountered being asked a password during boot-up so this seems to only affect erasing access?
Taking the drive to a different system doesn’t change a thing, still an UEFI HDD password prompt.
Funnily the RED still shows up there as not frozen but another attempt to secure-erase it fails after a few seconds.
The password on bios is why I suggested this avenue- I ran into that when an ssd got stuck, and I tried all sorts of master passwords from samsung and the board maker, before checking the app I had used
I’m so used to “help” not being any help that I didn’t even think of that (“Help” -> “Disable Security” in the Parted Magic Secure Erase tool).
(And yes, I’m using the subscription version since this distribution really helps normies a lot - even I can tell a shitty the SSD manufacturers’ software tools are, it’s just nice to be able to have all these features with a user-friendly GUI)
if they are outdated, then say that too, for prosperity / future