[SOLVED] Secure Erase on a laptop with no CD drive

Oct 25, 2019
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Summary: I have a Lenovo laptop with no CD drive, the drive is a “WDC WD5000LPCX-2 1A0Z” with 500GB capacity. I want to execute the ATA Secure Erase command, which is the only way to wipe the HPA and all other normally “untouchable” data regardless of management tables/marked sectors/everything else. Is there any way to do this from a flash drive, Western Digital software, anything?


Additional information:
I am aware that HDDErase, hdparm, and Parted Magic are tools that could do this. I tried HDDErase and it didn’t recognize the drive, presumably because I was using it from a USB drive, apparently it’s “supposed” to work from a CD, but the laptop has no optical drive. Additionally, the BIOS has no settings to change the drive to “IDE mode”. I read some other stuff about how you need to unplug the SATA cable and some other things, but I’m not going to disassemble anything because it’s a laptop.


Then hdparm is a Linux utility, also read that is supposed to be used from a CD. Parted Magic costs money and I’m not sure if that would work properly from a USB drive either.


So I’m wondering how, if it is even possible, to execute the Secure Erase command and totally wipe this drive’s HPA/everything to defaults, given the laptop has no CD drive.
If there is some way to use a tool that could work from a USB drive, I could use that, as well as if the hdparm security erase command is possible from inside a running Linux installation, but that seems paradoxical.


tl;dr: How can I execute the Secure Erase command (internal HDD erase) on a laptop without CD drive or disassembly?
HDD model: Western Digital "WDC WD5000LPCX-2 1A0Z"
 
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