On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:

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On Friday, 2009-03-06 at 12:29 +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

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Hi, I have a seagate drive which has somehow become locked in maximum security mode, does anyone have any idea how to reset the master password. There's a program on the ultimate boot cd to do this but it requires the master password. I've looked in seagate site and forums and all I have come up with is the drive is a brick when this happens. Googling only brings up a master password for xbox which doesn't work.

I had to investigate this for a friend recently, and as far as I could discover, it is impossible. If the disk is protected by password and you don't know it, the disk is lost. Worse, there is no way to reset password and erase/format the data, unless you know the master password.

The idea is to securely protect the data for the owner of the disk. There are some differences between manufacturers.

The tool to manipulate the password in linux is hdparm.

There is a tool around (HDDerase), used to securely erase a disk, that as part of the procedure, the first thing it does is secure the disk with password. I think it does what the hdparm manual calls "--security-erase PWD" or "--security-erase-enhanced PWD". If the procedure is aborted, the disk is not accessible by anybody without the password. I can't think of a real use for this feature, unless the "bad guys" are coming and you hit the self-destruct button of your computers.

The thing is, my friend had used that utility, and aborted it in the middle (or the battery gave out, I think); he was not aware of the password thing. Some days later, a second pass of the utility finished the erasure and cleared the password, so we recovered the disk - totally blank. The utility came in one of do-it-all utilities CDs for windows. He wanted to clear the disk and reformat, so he used it (click, click, enter) - without reading: obviously, he does not read English, but he wouldn't have read it were it in Spanish, anyway :-p

There are also businesses that claim to be able to recover such disks.

These are the links I found, a few months back (I looked at Fujitsu because our disk was from that make; I got no answer to my email to Fujitsu):

<http://search.fujitsu.com/es/search.jsp?q=contraseña&btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0&btnG=Buscar&entqr=0&restrict=all_es&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&num=10&ie=UTF-8> <http://www.fujitsu.com/es/services/products/peripherals/handydrives/dataIII.html> <http://www.fujitsu.com/es/news/pr/20071024.html> <http://www.google.es/search?num=100&hl=es&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=ROD&q=mhz2320bh+password&btnG=Buscar&meta=>

We specialize in Fujitsu Data Recovery services <http://www.californiaraidrecovery.com/fujitsu-data-recovery-service.html>

Encryption HDD FAQ <http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/encryption-faq.htm>

<http://www.hddunlock.com/support/faq/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDDerase> <http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/DataSanitizationTutorial.pdf> <http://www.google.es/search?q=hdderase&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a> <http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/> <http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml> <http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=148>

Wish you luck!

Carlos is right in that reading the man page for hdparm is good place to at least understand what your normal options are. Getting the data back will be expensive, so I hope you don't need it. There is a $10K PCI card that supposidely works well. Obviously there are also firms that will do it for you. Expect to pay a couple $K I would guess. (and it is a guess) I don't know the Seagate Master Password, but you may be able to get it. All you can do with it is wipe the drive and unlock it for future use. So with some work you may be able to save yourself $100 or whatever the drive is worth. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

On Friday, 2009-03-06 at 15:49 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:

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I don't know the Seagate Master Password, but you may be able to get it. All you can do with it is wipe the drive and unlock it for future use. So with some work you may be able to save yourself $100 or whatever the drive is worth.

I believe the master password is set by the owner of the disk, not the manufacturer. Unless the manufacturer sets a default one :-?

I wonder where the password is kept? On the disk media? Or in flash rom somewhere on the controller board? I've had success in swapping the controller boards on Seagate Barracuda SCSI disks in the past. The boards are easily swappable without soldering or cutting wires. If the data is really important I'd purchase a new disk (exactly the same manufacturer and disk model number) and see if a controller swap would work. Don't blame me if you break something!!! Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday, 2009-03-06 at 13:43 -0800, Lew Wolfgang wrote:

I wonder where the password is kept? On the disk media? Or in flash rom somewhere on the controller board?

I think it could depend on the manufacturer: whether it is simply an access password, or true data encryption. In the second case, swapping the circuit board would be useless. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkmxsDIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9W/tACZAZZNiTzcSyEzdYB9RaXv3NiL w+QAn2b9Gr2rVvX/Ztn0FAQ/8GCWw/qd =lx7h -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2009-03-07 at 08:51 +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

I tried swapping the board with an identical one from a mechanically failed disk and still got the password locked error so it must be on the media.

Makes sense... why would they use flash, when they have tons of on disk storage space available? But it is a pity. Well, not so much a pity... imagine you protect a disk, and it is stolen: you'd wish the bad guys couldn't ever read it, or at least, not that easy.

I don't need the data, I need the drive blank. I don't think much of seagate if there isn't a way to reset the drive that would mean that in the case where something goes wrong password wise you have to buy a new drive.

You could write to them and ask? :-?

Carlos's comment about his friend managing to complete the security erase has given me new hope,

But that was because the program he used had saved the password when interrupted.

I will play with hdparm a bit when I have more time and share what I learn.

Tell us what you manage. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkmyWDkACgkQtTMYHG2NR9U1lgCfcp7GDx6DySpJvVqVcOCh3tja K8AAnAtOXjm0srDQ56yPu+eKYx1H9hjG =9Dhf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org