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From: Paul on 1 Jul 2010 09:36
~misfit~ wrote:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Grinder wrote:
>> On 7/1/2010 12:10 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs ShadowTek wrote:
>>>> On 2010-07-01, ~misfit~<sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>>>> However, when I dropped them in a SATA-USB dock and went to run my
>>>>> HDD scrubbing
>>>>> / over-writing software I got a message that the HDD was password
>>>>> protected.
>>>> Are you simply trying to overwrite the files on the filesystem?
>>>>
>>>> If the filesystem is encrypted, all you can do is reformat the disk.
>>> No, the lock-out is seemingly in the HDDs firmware, I can't even
>>> access them to reformat them.
>> I've run into this situation a few times in xbox (original) modding
>> forums, as that console would hardware lock the drive based upon a
>> password encoded in a chip on the motherboard. In the half-dozen
>> resolutions I participated in, we were able to retrieve the hd key
>> from the xbox, or use a known password from the process that had last
>> modded the system.
>>
>> However, there were two claims as to how to unlock a drive where you
>> truly did not know the password:
>>
>> 1) Flash the firmware. Apparently, on some HDs, flashing the firmware
>> would also wipe out the existing key. I have not personally confirmed
>> that this has ever worked.
>>
>> 2) Use a backdoor password from the manufacturer. Some manufacturers
>> apparently realized the inherent fatality in lost passwords, and wrote
>> in one that would always be recognized. I have not personally
>> confirms that this has ever worked.
>>
>> Good luck to you, and please report your finding as this is something
>> where my interest far exceeds my education.
>
> Ok, thanks for the input. As mentioned extensive Google searches haven't
> come up with anything yet but my Google-fu isn't as good as it could be.
> I'll be sure to post if I find a fix.

I'd start with the README files here, as they discuss passwords a bit,
as part of using Secure Erase. If the company uses the Master password
concept (i.e. company sets the Master password before giving the laptop
to the employee), it's possible they could be using this tool for erasure.

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

Other than that, you'd need a copy of an ATA/ATAPI spec, to understand
under what conditions the password can be bypassed. I would have expected
drives to support reformatting or erasure, no matter what password is set,
for the purposes of recycling drives. But a quick read here, doesn't suggest
that is the case.

Get the T13 FTP site password here first...

http://www.t13.org/FTPSite/Default.aspx

Then visit the FTP site, and find a draft of some version of the spec.

ftp://ftp.t13.org/docs2007/D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf

See section "4.20 Security feature set" on page 91, for the bad
news. There is a Master and a User password.

"The SECURITY ERASE UNIT command, however, does accept either a
valid User or Master password."

"The device shall have a password attempt counter...
The counter shall be set to five after a power-on or hardware reset."

The drive might be designed to a different version of the spec than
that, in which case, you'd look through the T13 repository for a draft
of the right vintage. The User and Master password concept has likely
been around for a while, while the Security Erase Unit thing is
a more recent addition.

One way to bypass the passwords, is described here. By attacking the
firmware area of the drive. The security status of the "Download Microcode"
command is listed as "Vendor Specific" in the ATA/ATAPI document. So it
sounds like it has potential.

http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/

I've also seen web pages, where people were connecting a three wire
serial cable to their disk drives, for repair purposes. That's a
USB to RS232 serial chip, but with something like a 3.3V TTL level output,
that you can wire to a drive. So there are other communication paths
to drives, but they may be vendor specific as well.

http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/457286-seagate-bricked-firmware-drive-fix-pics.html

(Smash'em with a hammer, and save the magnets... :-) )

Paul
From: GMAN on 1 Jul 2010 18:02
In article <i0gnis$5sr$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, "~misfit~" <sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:
>I have a friend who is the IT guy for a company. Recently he was tasked with
>disposing of several EOL (for them) laptops and company policy for them is
>to remove and destroy (big hammer...) the HDDs and then pass on the rest of
>the machine to the IT reseller company which they always deal with.
>
>I couldn't bear to see / hear about good HDDs being smashed so I gave him my
>word (which is indeed my bond, he's known me long enough to know that's
>true) that the data wouldn't be accessed at all, just wiped. So I became the
>proud owner of five second-hand Toshiba 120GB 5400rpm SATA HDDs. (Model
>MK1252GSX)
>
>However, when I dropped them in a SATA-USB dock and went to run my HDD
>scrubbing
>/ over-writing software I got a message that the HDD was password protected.
>They all are. (I get a similar message when I put them in my ThinkPad HDD
>ultrabay only from the ThinkPad BIOS.) I've Googled but have so far been
>unable to resolve the issue. It seems that I may have to destroy them after
>all. That goes against everything that I believe in. :-(
>
>Can anybody help me in my quest to keep perfectly good HDDs out of the
>landfill and do my bit for reducing needless waste?
>
>TYVMIA,


try this!!!!


http://www.filecluster.
com/System-Utilities/File-Disk-Management/Download-HDD-Unlock.html





Its free to test, $10 to buy the software.



HDD Unlock - Unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives easy

HDD Unlock Wizard is a user-friendly application which allows you to easily
unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives

HDD Unlock Wizard is a user-friendly application which allows you to easily
unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives. This tool will remove an unknown User or
Master password and your hard drive will be ready for use.

While unlocking, HDD Unlock Wizard will erase and re-certify the drive.


HDD Unlock Wizard supports:

- Unlocking of desktop drives
- Unlocking of X-BOX drives
- Unlocking of 2.5-inch laptop drives


What is a HDD Lock?

All hard disk drives have the possibility to set a hardware password, thus
making the drive completely inaccessible unless a correct password is
provided. When you set a password on your notebook, the notebook locks the
drive as well. XBox gaming consoles and some desktop computers can also lock
hard disk drives.

If you forget the original password, there is no way to use the hard drive
anymore. HDD Unlock Wizard removes any password and makes the drive useable
again, thus saving you time and money.

Note: HDD Unlock Wizard does not support external USB and FireWire enclosures.
Please attach drives directly to the motherboard

HDD Unlock is licensed as Demo for the Windows operating system / platform.
HDD Unlock is provided as a free to try download for all software users
(Demo).
From: ~misfit~ on 2 Jul 2010 04:56
Somewhere on teh intarwebs Paul wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote:
>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Grinder wrote:
>>> On 7/1/2010 12:10 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
>>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs ShadowTek wrote:
>>>>> On 2010-07-01, ~misfit~<sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>>>>> However, when I dropped them in a SATA-USB dock and went to run
>>>>>> my HDD scrubbing
>>>>>> / over-writing software I got a message that the HDD was password
>>>>>> protected.
>>>>> Are you simply trying to overwrite the files on the filesystem?
>>>>>
>>>>> If the filesystem is encrypted, all you can do is reformat the
>>>>> disk.
>>>> No, the lock-out is seemingly in the HDDs firmware, I can't even
>>>> access them to reformat them.
>>> I've run into this situation a few times in xbox (original) modding
>>> forums, as that console would hardware lock the drive based upon a
>>> password encoded in a chip on the motherboard. In the half-dozen
>>> resolutions I participated in, we were able to retrieve the hd key
>>> from the xbox, or use a known password from the process that had
>>> last modded the system.
>>>
>>> However, there were two claims as to how to unlock a drive where you
>>> truly did not know the password:
>>>
>>> 1) Flash the firmware. Apparently, on some HDs, flashing the
>>> firmware would also wipe out the existing key. I have not
>>> personally confirmed that this has ever worked.
>>>
>>> 2) Use a backdoor password from the manufacturer. Some
>>> manufacturers apparently realized the inherent fatality in lost
>>> passwords, and wrote in one that would always be recognized. I
>>> have not personally confirms that this has ever worked.
>>>
>>> Good luck to you, and please report your finding as this is
>>> something where my interest far exceeds my education.
>>
>> Ok, thanks for the input. As mentioned extensive Google searches
>> haven't come up with anything yet but my Google-fu isn't as good as
>> it could be. I'll be sure to post if I find a fix.
>
> I'd start with the README files here, as they discuss passwords a bit,
> as part of using Secure Erase. If the company uses the Master password
> concept (i.e. company sets the Master password before giving the
> laptop to the employee), it's possible they could be using this tool for
> erasure.
> http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
>
> Other than that, you'd need a copy of an ATA/ATAPI spec, to understand
> under what conditions the password can be bypassed. I would have
> expected drives to support reformatting or erasure, no matter what
> password is set, for the purposes of recycling drives. But a quick
> read here, doesn't suggest that is the case.
>
> Get the T13 FTP site password here first...
>
> http://www.t13.org/FTPSite/Default.aspx
>
> Then visit the FTP site, and find a draft of some version of the spec.
>
> ftp://ftp.t13.org/docs2007/D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf
>
> See section "4.20 Security feature set" on page 91, for the bad
> news. There is a Master and a User password.
>
> "The SECURITY ERASE UNIT command, however, does accept either a
> valid User or Master password."
>
> "The device shall have a password attempt counter...
> The counter shall be set to five after a power-on or hardware
> reset."
> The drive might be designed to a different version of the spec than
> that, in which case, you'd look through the T13 repository for a draft
> of the right vintage. The User and Master password concept has likely
> been around for a while, while the Security Erase Unit thing is
> a more recent addition.
>
> One way to bypass the passwords, is described here. By attacking the
> firmware area of the drive. The security status of the "Download
> Microcode" command is listed as "Vendor Specific" in the ATA/ATAPI
> document. So it sounds like it has potential.
>
> http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/
>
> I've also seen web pages, where people were connecting a three wire
> serial cable to their disk drives, for repair purposes. That's a
> USB to RS232 serial chip, but with something like a 3.3V TTL level
> output, that you can wire to a drive. So there are other
> communication paths to drives, but they may be vendor specific as well.
>
> http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/457286-seagate-bricked-firmware-drive-fix-pics.html
>
> (Smash'em with a hammer, and save the magnets... :-) )

Wow! Thanks Paul, a lot to digest there. I quickly looked at the last link
(I always seem to be in a damn hurry, currently fixing broken file
associations on a machine for a member of the local 'greypower', FoC of
course). The last link say they can do this model but at US$190 for the five
drives. hardly worth it as I'm not after the data and the second-hand drives
aren't worth much.

I'm just trying to save working tech from the landfill.

Will look at this more extensively later, thanks.
--
Shaun.

"When we dream.... that's just our brains defragmenting" G Jackson.


From: ~misfit~ on 2 Jul 2010 05:04
Somewhere on teh intarwebs GMAN wrote:
> In article <i0gnis$5sr$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, "~misfit~"
> <sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> I have a friend who is the IT guy for a company. Recently he was
>> tasked with disposing of several EOL (for them) laptops and company
>> policy for them is to remove and destroy (big hammer...) the HDDs
>> and then pass on the rest of the machine to the IT reseller company
>> which they always deal with.
>>
>> I couldn't bear to see / hear about good HDDs being smashed so I
>> gave him my word (which is indeed my bond, he's known me long enough
>> to know that's true) that the data wouldn't be accessed at all, just
>> wiped. So I became the proud owner of five second-hand Toshiba 120GB
>> 5400rpm SATA HDDs. (Model MK1252GSX)
>>
>> However, when I dropped them in a SATA-USB dock and went to run my
>> HDD scrubbing
>> / over-writing software I got a message that the HDD was password
>> protected. They all are. (I get a similar message when I put them in
>> my ThinkPad HDD ultrabay only from the ThinkPad BIOS.) I've Googled
>> but have so far been unable to resolve the issue. It seems that I
>> may have to destroy them after all. That goes against everything
>> that I believe in. :-(
>>
>> Can anybody help me in my quest to keep perfectly good HDDs out of
>> the landfill and do my bit for reducing needless waste?
>>
>> TYVMIA,
>
>
> try this!!!!
>
>
> http://www.filecluster.
> com/System-Utilities/File-Disk-Management/Download-HDD-Unlock.html
>
>
>
>
>
> Its free to test, $10 to buy the software.
>
>
>
> HDD Unlock - Unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives easy
>
> HDD Unlock Wizard is a user-friendly application which allows you to
> easily
> unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives
>
> HDD Unlock Wizard is a user-friendly application which allows you to
> easily
> unlock IDE and SATA Hard disk drives. This tool will remove an
> unknown User or
> Master password and your hard drive will be ready for use.
>
> While unlocking, HDD Unlock Wizard will erase and re-certify the
> drive.
>
>
> HDD Unlock Wizard supports:
>
> - Unlocking of desktop drives
> - Unlocking of X-BOX drives
> - Unlocking of 2.5-inch laptop drives
>
>
> What is a HDD Lock?
>
> All hard disk drives have the possibility to set a hardware password,
> thus
> making the drive completely inaccessible unless a correct password is
> provided. When you set a password on your notebook, the notebook
> locks the
> drive as well. XBox gaming consoles and some desktop computers can
> also lock
> hard disk drives.
>
> If you forget the original password, there is no way to use the hard
> drive
> anymore. HDD Unlock Wizard removes any password and makes the drive
> useable
> again, thus saving you time and money.
>
> Note: HDD Unlock Wizard does not support external USB and FireWire
> enclosures.
> Please attach drives directly to the motherboard
>
> HDD Unlock is licensed as Demo for the Windows operating system /
> platform.
> HDD Unlock is provided as a free to try download for all software
> users (Demo).

Thanks GMAN. It seems it's a free demo, (which will tell you if it can
unlock the HDD) then $10 per drive to actually do the unlocking. It might be
the cheapest option if it actually works, cheaper than even my time spent
learning other ways perhaps. I'll look into this further later.
--
Cheers,
Shaun.

"When we dream.... that's just our brains defragmenting" G Jackson.


From: mbegz on 2 Jul 2010 10:26
Few years ago I inherited a laptop with the same problem. In googling
I found out a company who unlock for a price (some � for 40GB or so,
not very expensive). You do not have to send the HD to them, you
connect to their cite and they do it from there. Depending on the
size of the HD, couple of hours or more.

Unfortunately I have forgotten their name etc. Google it and might
find them.

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010 22:28:14 +1200, "~misfit~"
<sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:

>Somewhere on teh intarwebs Grinder wrote:
>> On 7/1/2010 12:10 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs ShadowTek wrote:
>>>> On 2010-07-01, ~misfit~<sore_n_happy(a)nospamyahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> However, when I dropped them in a SATA-USB dock and went to run my
>>>>> HDD scrubbing
>>>>> / over-writing software I got a message that the HDD was password
>>>>> protected.
>>>>
>>>> Are you simply trying to overwrite the files on the filesystem?
>>>>
>>>> If the filesystem is encrypted, all you can do is reformat the disk.
>>>
>>> No, the lock-out is seemingly in the HDDs firmware, I can't even
>>> access them to reformat them.
>>
>> I've run into this situation a few times in xbox (original) modding
>> forums, as that console would hardware lock the drive based upon a
>> password encoded in a chip on the motherboard. In the half-dozen
>> resolutions I participated in, we were able to retrieve the hd key
>> from the xbox, or use a known password from the process that had last
>> modded the system.
>>
>> However, there were two claims as to how to unlock a drive where you
>> truly did not know the password:
>>
>> 1) Flash the firmware. Apparently, on some HDs, flashing the firmware
>> would also wipe out the existing key. I have not personally confirmed
>> that this has ever worked.
>>
>> 2) Use a backdoor password from the manufacturer. Some manufacturers
>> apparently realized the inherent fatality in lost passwords, and wrote
>> in one that would always be recognized. I have not personally
>> confirms that this has ever worked.
>>
>> Good luck to you, and please report your finding as this is something
>> where my interest far exceeds my education.
>
>Ok, thanks for the input. As mentioned extensive Google searches haven't
>come up with anything yet but my Google-fu isn't as good as it could be.
>I'll be sure to post if I find a fix.
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