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ATA security passwords from Win7 x64?

May 15th, 2022, 19:16

Is there any tool that can set and disable (known) password from disks from within Windows, particularly Windows 7 64bit?

I'm trying to use yet another tool, DRevitalize 3.x (demo), which seems to offer a vendor specific internal "format unit" function (suppossedly distinct from ATA secure erase, and it involves resetting the defect list too... maybe it's a 2in1 which clears defects and then runs ATA erase? I don't know) which also requires security mode to be active with a password set, but the program itself doesn't seem to offer the functionality to set passwords in order to access the desired routine... or the implementation doesn't work, or there's a bug... honestly, I have no idea.

After setting passwords to some disks from DOS with HDAT2, I went back to Windows to use DRevitalize, and I did manage to do this for one disk, but another one, after monkeying around a bit, somehow has reverted to non-password or something, I won't be sure what's going on until I go back to HDAT2. But this back and forth is really painful and slow, as my BIOS doesn't seem to like those disks with the password on and takes forever to boot.

As for Windows software I've tried for setting a password, Victoria requires working in "PIO mode" for it's ATA security functionality, but it already warns on startup that it won't make PIO mode available in 64bit windows.

I tried OpenSeaChest, which I recently found out about, but I can't seem to figure out how to make OpenSeaChest_Security set a password, or maybe really doesn't work, or not with that Fujitsu disk. The program does warn it may or may not work with non-Seagate disks, but what's weird is that when I try to run the command for setting a password, it just outputs the short help text instead. There's no error, warning, or anything.

Any known working tools can set and remove passwords to disks from Windows(7) 64bit?

Re: ATA security passwords from Win7 x64?

May 16th, 2022, 3:11

Answering myself:
Far from ideal, in my opinion, but actually, the demo of version 4.x of DRevitalize can do this.
I didn't use is, since it apparently disables the one function that I started using DRevitalize for in the first place, but even that may not be actually true, as I'm in the process of finding out.

Re: ATA security passwords from Win7 x64?

June 1st, 2022, 13:48

It seems this DRevitalize demo doesn't always work right for this task.
Currently, I don't have need for this anymore, it seems, but I'd still like to know of some tool that can set and remove ATA passwords from Windows(7), in case I need it again.
I'll leave this and wait to see if someone knows.

Thanks.
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