How to get around a mysterious security gimmick in Toshiba 2

[tf100002]

Hello forum,

I recently joined this forum and have a problem that’s been troubling me for the past year. Now that I’ve found such a helpful community, I’m hoping someone here can share their knowledge and advice.

I purchased a Toshiba HDD (MQ01AAD032C), a 320GB 2.5” drive from around 2013, originally made for automotive navigation systems. I found it at a very low price on an auction site and bought five of them to use in my PC. However, I later discovered they were locked with a BIOS password. Since I bought them with my limited budget, I was very disappointed to find I couldn’t use them.

After some time, I managed to extract the master password for the drives using a dump. I then tried unlocking them with tools like HDAT2 and MHDD, but these tools didn’t work with the Toshiba HDDs. Interestingly, they did work with other brands like Fujitsu, so I suspect Toshiba drives have an additional layer of security that prevents direct password entry.

I believe there might be a specific signal or code that needs to be sent to the drive before entering the master password. Does anyone know of a tool capable of doing this? So far, I’ve only tried HDAT2 and MHDD. Could it be that only expensive tools like the PC-3000 can unlock these drives?

I’ve also heard about a method called ZU that erases the password entirely, but I’d prefer to unlock it using the correct password if possible.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[hawkinf]

seems that drevitalize is able to clear sata passwd https://drevitalize.com/

[fzabkar]

After some time, I managed to extract the master password for the drives using a dump.

Can we see your "dump"?

[tf100002]

I don't want to clear the password, I want to somehow disable the feature that prevents access to the master password on the Toshiba HDD.

[SWM]

If you have a master password, you can perform a secure erase of the disk.
After erasing the data, the user password will be removed and access will be open.
The disk should not be in a secure "frozen" state! Which is usual when loading the OS.
The master password will remain unchanged.
If you want to leave the user password and get access to the data - this is a crime...

[tf100002]

Hi fzabkar,

Thanks for your comment.

HDAT2 confirmed that the disk was in “WARNING” status.

We think that this matter is a problem before erasing or canceling the master password.
Because HDD made by FUJITSU which copied the same master password until now was able to be unlocked even by WARNING, I still think that it is made not to accept the input of the password by the special function given to HDD made by TOSHIBA.

I recently checked with a specialist who is familiar with HDDs, and he told me that Toshiba HDDs sold in 2013 have a TRM function, and that there is a special base built in, and that the master password cannot be unlocked unless the base is physically removed.

We are trying to find out the exact specifications of this particular disk and if there is any way to systematically disable this function.

Best Regards,