Re: [opensuse] Does anyone know about disk master password

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Carlos E. R.
<robin.listas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



On Friday, 2009-03-06 at 12:29 +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

Hi, I have a seagate drive which has somehow become locked in maximum
security mode, does anyone have any idea how to reset the master
password. There's a program on the ultimate boot cd to do this but it
requires the master password. I've looked in seagate site and forums and
all I have come up with is the drive is a brick when this happens.
Googling only brings up a master password for xbox which doesn't work.

I had to investigate this for a friend recently, and as far as I could
discover, it is impossible. If the disk is protected by password and you
don't know it, the disk is lost. Worse, there is no way to reset password
and erase/format the data, unless you know the master password.

The idea is to securely protect the data for the owner of the disk. There
are some differences between manufacturers.

The tool to manipulate the password in linux is hdparm.


There is a tool around (HDDerase), used to securely erase a disk, that as
part of the procedure, the first thing it does is secure the disk with
password. I think it does what the hdparm manual calls "--security-erase
PWD" or "--security-erase-enhanced PWD". If the procedure is aborted, the
disk is not accessible by anybody without the password. I can't think of a
real use for this feature, unless the "bad guys" are coming and you hit the
self-destruct button of your computers.

The thing is, my friend had used that utility, and aborted it in the middle
(or the battery gave out, I think); he was not aware of the password thing.
Some days later, a second pass of the utility finished the erasure and
cleared the password, so we recovered the disk - totally blank. The utility
came in one of do-it-all utilities CDs for windows. He wanted to clear the
disk and reformat, so he used it (click, click, enter) - without reading:
obviously, he does not read English, but he wouldn't have read it were it in
Spanish, anyway :-p


There are also businesses that claim to be able to recover such disks.


These are the links I found, a few months back (I looked at Fujitsu because
our disk was from that make; I got no answer to my email to Fujitsu):


<http://search.fujitsu.com/es/search.jsp?q=contraseña&btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0&btnG=Buscar&entqr=0&restrict=all_es&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&num=10&ie=UTF-8>
<http://www.fujitsu.com/es/services/products/peripherals/handydrives/dataIII.html>
<http://www.fujitsu.com/es/news/pr/20071024.html>
<http://www.google.es/search?num=100&hl=es&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=ROD&q=mhz2320bh+password&btnG=Buscar&meta=>

We specialize in Fujitsu Data Recovery services
<http://www.californiaraidrecovery.com/fujitsu-data-recovery-service.html>

Encryption HDD FAQ
<http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/encryption-faq.htm>

<http://www.hddunlock.com/support/faq/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDDerase>
<http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/DataSanitizationTutorial.pdf>
<http://www.google.es/search?q=hdderase&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a>
<http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/>
<http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml>
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=148>


Wish you luck!

Carlos is right in that reading the man page for hdparm is good place
to at least understand what your normal options are.

Getting the data back will be expensive, so I hope you don't need it.
There is a $10K PCI card that supposidely works well. Obviously there
are also firms that will do it for you. Expect to pay a couple $K I
would guess. (and it is a guess)

I don't know the Seagate Master Password, but you may be able to get
it. All you can do with it is wipe the drive and unlock it for future
use. So with some work you may be able to save yourself $100 or
whatever the drive is worth.

Greg
--
Greg Freemyer
Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer
First 99 Days Litigation White Paper -
http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf

The Norcross Group
The Intersection of Evidence & Technology
http://www.norcrossgroup.com
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx