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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Read sectors with ATA password from unlocked drive

January 15th, 2010, 10:31

Hello

I'd like to analyze if a specific system is setting a password on the drive in the clear (meaning the password as given in the bios) or if it uses a hash algorithm and sends then the hashed password to the harddisk...
I thought easiest to do that would be setting a password on a drive and then read it's sector where the password is stored. Unluckily I'm quite new to MHDD and with the search function I didn't really find anything useful. (All postings seem to be about how to remove a set password without knowing it, but in this case I know the password and I can unlock the drive...)

So basically:
1. Setting Master and User password on the harddrive with high security.
2. Unlock drive with user or master password.
3. Start MHDD and analyze the drive.


Now, can the sector where the ATA passwords (User and Master) are stored be read from any of the following drives with MHDD when they're unlocked?
- Toshiba MK4025GAS
- Western Digital WD2500BEVE
- Hitachi HTS54108

I'd also have some even older 3.5" IDE/SATA drives (IBM, HGST, WD, ...) or some newer 2.5" SATA drives (WD, HGST, ...) that I could use for that experiment, but one of the drives above, especially the Toshiba, would be more comfortable.

Thanks for all replys.

Regards, Moskito
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