Unable to unlock WD10JPLX

[ElementalBlack]

I was trying to perform an ATA secure erase on one of my hard drives (like I have many times before), and something went wrong. I normally use a live Ubuntu image with hdparm to initiate the secure erase, and I haven't had an issue before.

I'm not sure what happened this time, but the drive is locked and I cannot seem to unlock it. I know (or thought I knew) the user password for the drive, but all attempts to disable the security with:

Code:

hdparm --user-master u --security-disable 1234Pass /dev/sda

fail with a 'SG_IO: bad/missing sense data'.

I've read viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8374 and followed the guide linked in the post made on February 16th, 2018: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=2353

I get some errors when trying to remove the password with WDC Marvel 3.3.1 (Demo) in a Mini Windows Xp running from a Hiren’s BootCD:

I'm not really sure what to do at this point. I was trying to secure erase the drive so I don't care about the data on it, I would just like to have a usable drive again.

[Mikippp]

Hi,
WD10JPLX-00MBPT0 it's Hitachi drive and you need to use Hitachi tools

Mikippp

[ElementalBlack]

Thanks Mikippp, that's a step in the right direction.

So would that be Zu with P. and S. ?

Edit: I don't have any special hardware, so I'm hoping I can put the drive in safe mode and unlock it without any extra hardware.

[ElementalBlack]

So I need some sort of hardware to unlock this, such as a PC-3000?

I cannot figure out what happened, as I'm almost positive I remember the password. The device is in high security mode right now according to hdparm, so I should be able to issue a security unlock for it.

Is there some sort of ATA restriction on unlocking a drive from the user account even if the password is known?

MHDD isn't even able to see the drive from what I can tell, even though everything is running over IDE on a desktop, so I'm forced to use hdparm to issue commands.

[ElementalBlack]

After reading your post I'm not clear on what I should try.

Is the SeDiv demo the best approach at this point? What other software tools could support this drive to provide the Super On?

[ElementalBlack]

This is looking pretty bleak.

Isn't PC-3000 a hardware solution that I would have to purchase?

[maximus]

I was trying to perform an ATA secure erase on one of my hard drives (like I have many times before), and something went wrong. I normally use a live Ubuntu image with hdparm to initiate the secure erase, and I haven't had an issue before.

I'm not sure what happened this time, but the drive is locked and I cannot seem to unlock it. I know (or thought I knew) the user password for the drive, but all attempts to disable the security with:

Code:

hdparm --user-master u --security-disable 1234Pass /dev/sda

fail with a 'SG_IO: bad/missing sense data'.

I just did some testing and the first thing I can say is you are likely using an Ubuntu version above 16.04. Linux broke something in the ATA passthough after kernel version 4.4. That is why you get the 'SG_IO: bad/missing sense data'. It should be an IO error instead. Not that it will solve your problem, but try with an older version of the live CD.

(Side Note: at least I know my software is not the only thing affected by this change in the Linux kernel).

So the result you are seeing means there was an error with the command, the same kind of error that can be from a wrong password. Adding the option --verbose to the command could produce some possible helpful information to a few of us on here (with the older Ubuntu version). But if you don't have the password correct, or something bad happened that changed the condition of the drive, then you may be out of luck for any easy solution.

[ElementalBlack]

I just did some testing and the first thing I can say is you are likely using an Ubuntu version above 16.04. Linux broke something in the ATA passthough after kernel version 4.4. That is why you get the 'SG_IO: bad/missing sense data'. It should be an IO error instead. Not that it will solve your problem, but try with an older version of the live CD.

(Side Note: at least I know my software is not the only thing affected by this change in the Linux kernel).

So the result you are seeing means there was an error with the command, the same kind of error that can be from a wrong password. Adding the option --verbose to the command could produce some possible helpful information to a few of us on here (with the older Ubuntu version). But if you don't have the password correct, or something bad happened that changed the condition of the drive, then you may be out of luck for any easy solution.

I was using 18.04, but I just tried --security-unlock and other --security-* commands as the user account (with the password I set) and as the master account with the default passwords for HGST and WDC on 16.04.

I still get a "SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 ..." with 16.04, are you saying the version needs 14.04?

I can try Victoria For Windows, but I don't know how this is supposed to be run. I'd like to be able to run it from a live USB drive, but I'm not sure how to do that, or what Windows version it requires.

[ElementalBlack]

I just tried it with --verbose and it gives a ton of info, but I understand none of it.

I tried to issue a unlock with the default master password:

Code:

hdparm --verbose --user-master m --security-unlock "                                " /dev/sda

and it gave:

Code:

outgoing cdb:  85 0a 06 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 f2 00
outgoing_data:  01 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
SG_IO: ATA_16 status=0x2, host_status=0x0, driver_status=0x8
SG_IO: 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
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
SG_IO: desc[]:  04 51 40 00 21 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
      ATA_16 stat=00 err=00 nsect=04 lbal=00 lbam=00 lbah=00 dev=00
security_password: "                                "

/dev/sda:
Issuing SECURITY_UNLOCK command, password="                                ", user=master
oflags.bits.lob_all=0x8a, flags={ feat nsect command }
oflags.bits.hob_all=0x00, flags={ }

Let me know if the verbose output of another command would be helpful, or if there's anything helpful in the one above.

[maximus]

I was using 18.04, but I just tried --security-unlock and other --security-* commands as the user account (with the password I set) and as the master account with the default passwords for HGST and WDC on 16.04.

I still get a "SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 ..." with 16.04, are you saying the version needs 14.04?

I don't think it will matter or help any. The end result is the command failed, although I don't know why 16.04 still gives the bad/missing sense data error.

[maximus]

Let me know if the verbose output of another command would be helpful, or if there's anything helpful in the one above.

I believe the output shows the command failed with an abort when trying to unlock the drive. I don't think any more can be found from more verbose output. It is not accepting the unlock command with the password provided.

[maximus]

I would like to add that when trying passwords to unlock, there is a limit before the security count expires. Once the security count expires you must power cycle the drive to try new passwords, otherwise it will just keep failing even if you were to find the correct password. You can see if the security count is expired from the output of the following command, which is what I am assuming you are using to tell that the drive is locked.

Code:

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

[BGman]

If this is a Hitachi ARM drive and you want to erase it , you can use the FormatUnit command to do the task . It will not ask for password and at the end the drive will be unlocked.

[ElementalBlack]

This sounds promising, should these commands be issued with Victoria?

I'm still not clear on how Victoria is supposed to be run. Is it only for XP? Can it be run from a live CD like Hiren's?

I'm hesitant to use hdparm or Linux for this after it was what caused this problem.

[maximus]

If you need to run from a boot cd, HRT DEMO will not run from Hirens Boot CD. The option to run in compatibility mode does not exist. I would suggest WDMarvel demo, as it will run from hirens boot cd and will detect drives in AHCI mode (bios does not need to be in IDE mode). You just need to have it extracted on a USB flash drive and plug it in after booting to mini XP, and then run the executable. For what needs to be done, it would be the easiest to run without an actual XP installation.

[ElementalBlack]

I attempted to run the prepare, but kept getting "The drive is not ready".

Here are the steps I took:
1. Find the drive

2. Reset the drive with "Soft Reset" to clear any expired password attempts

3. Attempt to send the security erase prepare command

It seems strange to me that the prepare failed.

[ElementalBlack]

It sounds like I need to know the password to even unlock the drive. If I got the password right I could just security erase the drive I believe, but this issue is about not knowing the password.

I've spent hours just trying to figure out how I could run HRT, but it seems to costs money if I want to use anything newer than XP.

On top of that I don't know how to issue the unlock command with a password from Windows. Maybe HRT can do it, but I haven't even been able to try that software yet.

It seems like all these tools require Win98 and WinXP, which is growing harder to install on modern machines. I've spent many hours trying to solve this and it keeps coming back to needing to know the password.