ATA Security specification with usb drives

[Achelon]

Hi,

I am interesting in experimenting and learning and I was just curious, how do USB with ATA passthrough capability behave if the ATA security feature set is used?

For instance, I have a WD My Passport Ultra drive, if I passed through the ATA command to lock the drive with an ATA password, how would the drive behave? Has anyone tried this out of curiosity?

Regards,
Achelon

[maximus]

An interesting question, so I had to do a quick experiment. I have an older 250GB passport that is actually an ATA drive with an adapter. After setting a password (and power cycling) the drive will identify to the system normally but no partitions show up, no normal sectors can be read. So setting a password on this drive makes it unusable, and it does not ask for a password when connected. I am able to unlock the drive again using passthrough making it then readable by the system, and also remove the password again after unlocking.

Now what would happen on a newer drive with encryption? I have no idea, and don't have a drive like that to experiment on. It could work like my test, it could fail to accept the command, or it could possibly lock you out of the drive with no hope of unlocking via USB connection. Every model USB drive can react different to ATA passthrough commands, so it is an experiment waiting to happen.