WD Purple 4TB Drive (Original HGST Manufacture) Stuck at ATA

[moneralwakdi]

1. ​Victoria (PIO Mode): I attempted a Security Erase and it completed successfully according to the log (Security ERASE done). However, after performing a power cycle (Hard Reset), the drive locks itself up again immediately. When attempting to initialize it in Windows Disk Management, it throws an I/O device error.


2. ​SeDiv Utility: I switched over to the Hitachi/HGST architecture interface. Running the unlocking commands returns: Send Disable command successful! and Erase unit command sended!. But just like with Victoria, the moment I close the utility or restart the system, the drive goes back to being locked.



​It seems the password bypass/removal is only affecting the volatile RAM cache of the drive, and the lock configuration is persistently reloaded from the Service Area (SA) firmware upon reboot.

​I do have a backup folder provided by the vendor which contains an NVRAM_0.bin file under the HUA7220xxALA3 directory.

​My questions:

​Why is the drive reverting to a locked state even though the utilities report successful erasure/disabling commands?

​What is the exact step-by-step procedure in SeDiv to permanently write this clean NVRAM_0.bin file to the drive's firmware to clear the password for good?

​Is there a specific Module (like Mod 32 in standard WDs) that I should look for or modify within this native HGST microcode architecture?


​Any help or insights from the experts here would be highly appreciated.

​Thank you!

[fzabkar]

The ATA standard requires that the stored password by supplied to the drive before it will initiate a SECURITY ERASE UNIT command. This begs the question, why does the drive not abort the command in the absence of the correct password?

[Hardcore Games]

Definitely suggests this disk is not ATA6 so an older manual may need to be reviewed

Secured disks, I refuse them as bitlocker is better security that cannot be read without the key