Seagate ST12000DM0007-2GR116 - got ATA locked by seatools

[Jack487364]

Hello

new to this forum
I bought a refurbished 12TB Seagate Baracuda pro HDD on amazon for about 150$CAD.


I decided to test the HDD since there is a 30 days return window. I put it in an old lenovo E30 desktop PC.
I formatted a USB drive with seatools to completely test the drive. All the tests went well.
The drive worked wonderfully and SMART showed a few hours of uptime, so quite a good deal !
I don't remember exactly what i did, i think i did the full tests offered by Seatools, then i may zeroed the disk, or maybe i used the ATA erase function, i dont remember.
anyways, all seemed good, so I put the drive in my drawer.


A few weeks later, i took the time to install an old PC with a linux distro and syncthing, as my goal is to use this HDD for syncthings.
The PC would not boot with the drive attached, and asked for a password. im pretty sure i didn't set any.

I tried in another PC (Lenovo E30), same.

I tried in a USB enclosure, and launched Victoria. here is the info passport shows :

Seagate
Model: ST12000DM0007-2GR116
Firmware DN01
Serial ZJV5xxxx
Capacity 23437770752 LBAs 12,0 TB
API Size: 23437758646 LBAs -12106
CHS: 16383/16/63 8 GB
S.M.A.R.T Enabled, Errlog, Selftest
Cache Unk.size; L/A=ON; Wr=ON; ok
Support LBA, DLM, DMA UDMA-6
Erase Time ~ 17 hours 56 minutes
Security ON, High, Locked
ATA-8: SATA3, NCQ, PEC, SCT, SFDLM, WrUnk, W-R-V
SCT: AC2, AC3, AC4, AC5
SSD ext: SANITIZE
Sector Logic 512 bytes Phys 4096
Alias: Mobula

I tried multiple passords to unlock the drive with victoria as user and admin : "password", "" , "seatools" , "Seagate" , "seagate" , "Seagate (with 25 spaces)"

There is a PID written on the disk but im not sure it's usefull since i don't think it's a SED


at this point i don't know what to do, it's unusable
i spent a few hours on this already, but if someone can successfully PM me the steps i offer 20$USD in case of success

to be clear, the disk does not contain any data, i just need to be able to format it

thanks !

[fzabkar]

SeaTools would have set a password on the drive before executing an ATA Security Erase command.

[Jack487364]

SeaTools would have set a password on the drive before executing an ATA Security Erase command.

Maybe, any idea what this password would be ?

i tried in victoria the default passwords i could find here and there, power cycling the HDD every 3 tries

[SWM]

Run security erase again and wait for it to finish. (Erase Time ~ 17 hours 56 minutes Without powering down the HDD!).
The previous erase was not completed or an internal HDD error occurred.

[Jack487364]

Run security erase again and wait for it to finish. (Erase Time ~ 17 hours 56 minutes Without powering down the HDD!).
The previous erase was not completed or an internal HDD error occurred.

ok !
in order to do this i used the USB key with seatools again. I have found the log on it :
it seems that i did a sanitize overwrite, then a long SMART test, then erase boot tracks, then Erase overwrite full
all had completed.

SO I booted on seatools with the hdd powered up, and pluged the Sata cable while on Seatools. The HDD did not mounted up. maybe the lenovo E30 does not support Sata hot plugging.
So i tried in my USB enclosure, plugged it after booted in seatools. the drive is recognized along his serial number etc.

in the advanced features i tried to select all the options i did before. it says "FAIL".

i will try to just leave it alone overnight. if the problem is an ATA erase command that has to complete, technically the HDD can complete it itself.


LOG :

Code:

===============================================
SeaTools X v3.0.0
Model Number : ST12000DM0007-2GR116
Serial Number : ZJV5xxx
Firmware Revision : DN01
===============================================
08-21  | 16:58:38 |  Sanitize Overwrite Started
08-22  | 10:10:35 |  Sanitize Overwrite PASS
08-22  | 13:02:27 |  Long Generic Started
08-23  | 09:34:29 |  Long Generic PASS
08-23  | 10:55:47 |  Erase Boot Tracks Started
08-23  | 10:55:50 |  Erase Boot Tracks PASS
08-23  | 11:01:46 |  Erase Overwrite Full Started
08-24  | 07:45:32 |  Erase Overwrite Full PASS

[Jack487364]

I left the drive alone but it did not do anything

I have found more information about the "ATA secure erase command"
by design, the software that launch this command also have to set an ATA password on the disk. once the process is completed, the password is removed.

some people had problems with this command, leaving the drive locked and unusable. seems to apply to my situation

i have found this post :
https://superuser.com/questions/1478206 ... cure-erase

apparently on certain flavors of linux, the passwod is hardcoded as "xxxx"

I tried this password on victoria, no luck

no i have to know wich password uses Seatools. It's the standalone version, it runs from an USB drive. it uses a small linux OS called tinycore.

So the answer may be in the source code of seatools or tinycore. I did not find the information on google.