Seagate Hard Drive Password Issue

[nealinky]

Hi folks, I recently bought three used 500GB Seagate hard drives (Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS) at a yard sale for pretty cheap. The guy selling them said they were wiped and ready to go... but I cannot get them to do anything.

When I plug them into my PC via internally, I get the following prompt:

I have no idea what this password is, and it's set on all three drives. I have a lot of IT experience, but I've never dealt with something quite like this before...

I tried booting to my primary hard drive with one of the used ones attached via internally, but I cannot access/format the drive(s). I also hooked them up to an external hdd enclosure and tried formatting them by installing a new Windows OS on them, with Windows built-in Disk Management software, DiskPart, Darik's Boot And Nuke, Seagate's DiscWizard formatting software, upgrading the firmware (which the Seagate software doesn't even recongize the drive as being connected without correctly inputting the password), and a few other third party Windows partitioning programs. Nothing I do is working/letting me format them.

For more details with what it does using Window's Disk Management, here is a screenshot of the hard drive:

When I go to properties, here's a screenshot of what opens:

If I right-click where it says "Not Initialized" in Disk Management, I get an "Initialize Disk" option, shown in the following image:

However, when I try to initialize it, I get the following error:

It doesn't work when trying to initialize it using GPT either. I get similar errors with all the other partitioning programs I mentioned earlier.

Is there anything that can be done to wipe these so they can be usable, or am I screwed by the way someone setup that dumb hard drive password?

 

[drtweak]

Try this. I did some research a while back on some SEDs and hard drive passwords.

Turn off your PC and unplug the hard drives.

boot your PC up and make a Admin Password for your BIOS.

Turn off your PC and then plug in the hard drives to the SATA ports.

When the PC turns on and it ask for the password put in your BIOS password you just made and see if it lets you in. If it does you can turn off your PC. Go into your BIOS, and then remove the hard drive passwords.

In the mean time what kind of PC are you doing this on? I found the BIOS has to support Hard Drive Passwords for this to work. If a Hard drive has a password most PC's will require them to be access but you can't change them. This is different from a System or BIOS password and is specifically a Hard Drive password.

A i did testing of SED drives using the Hard Drive Password feather on Dell OptiPlexs and found that even if a Hard Drive password was set to one thing on one PC, but if another PC has the Admin BIOS password set on another and that supported Hard Drive passwords you could toss that hard drive which you don't know the password two, startup, use your Admin password for the hard drive password then Change the hard drive password WITHOUT know the old password. You can use your current Admin password as the "Old" passsword and then leave the new password blank and it resets it to nothing.

Try that out. See how it goes.

 

[nealinky]

drtweak: I appreciate your response. While doing my research I saw another person or two briefly mention something about trying to use a BIOS password for similar situations, but they didn't explain it very well like you did. So thanks for that suggestion. However, I just tried out your method by unplugging the HDDs, booting my Dell XPS 8700 to BIOS, setting the "Supervisor" password, saving, powering off, attaching one of the password problematic HDDs, powering on, and then inputting this new supervisor password when the HDD user password screen appears... but it said "Invalid password." I typed it a few times to make sure I didn't do any typos to no avail.

My BIOS also had a "User" password option, so I tried setting that password for the heck of it, but I had the same result.

 

[drtweak]

Yea no it would have to be Administrator password. Now this should work IF it is the the Hard Drive password I am thinking it is as to test it i tossed the newly password protected hard drive in a Dell Inspiron which couldn't set any password but it was able to accept the password and continue to boot.

You may have to look in the BIOS of your PC and make sure there is setting for Internal HDD-X Password (Where X is the Hard drive number of 0-How every many SATA port you have. In my case it is HDD-0). If you can get a hold of a new Dell Optiplex (X90 or newer) you might have better luck.

But yea without the hard drive password you are kinda SOL. IF you look at the Hard drive though is there a PSID number on it like this?

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8398/back.jpg

At the bottom there?

 

[nealinky]

Yeah, my BIOS did not have an "Administrator" password. I did not see anything about a HDD-X password either. I have access to a few more PCs that I can test out in the coming days (HP and Lenovo), so I'll see if they have any of those options.

And about the PSID number... unfortunately there's not a number like that on any of the hard drive labels.

 

[drtweak]

ok so they aren't Self Encrypting Hard drives then. But yea find to find a PC with a BIOS that has hard drive passwords in it. It will most likely be a OEM like HP, Dell etc.

 

[hang-the-9]

They set a hard drive password on it, which is set in the drive firmware. You will need to contact the drive vendor for support.