Secure erase and unlock Seagate SED HDD - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Bambur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2016, 01:42:13 pm
content: Hello to everyone!I have got in hold of a Seagate Momentus FDE HDD. It is a self-encrypting HDD and appears healthy otherwise, except for one peculiar thing. It is locked by WinMagic as far as I can tell. I have tried to investigate how WinMagic works and found one video explaining the technology:(at 2:43).And sure the drive exposes a partition of 128MB only.Youtube suggested me another video once and there was a link to some utility that could securely erase a SSD:I tried to use it on the HDD and it displayed the drive content (not to the file level of course), but did not allow erasing for some reason.On the other hand, I can see the SID printed on the drive label. I think it is the key to be used for resetting the drive back to the factory settings and erasing it. Thus, there is a hope to make the drive useful again.Unfortunately, Seagate seems to refuse helping due to fact that this particular drive was sold as an OEM to Dell. Dell seems to have no idea either. Winmagic site offers nothing or I could not find.Does anyone know a way to securely erase and unlock the HDD by giving the SID? Any thoughts are welcome too!Thanks in advance!

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2016, 04:03:26 pm
content: This isn't electronics related at all really is it? It's more how do I format this drive.http://www.seagate.com/au/en/tech-insights/how-to-ise-your-drive-master-ti/

author: Bambur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2016, 07:19:23 pm
content: Shock, you are absolutely correct. It is not directly related to the electronics. Although, it is about electronics in a wayThank you for posting the link to seagate.com. I should have mentioned it in my initial post. I have seen it. Unfortunately, it is useless. SeaTools for Windows fails to secure erase a SED HDD for some reason. It just hangs forever. Do not ask me why, I do not know.I thought someone from the community here would know something. I see many highly experienced people around here. That's why I posted here earlier today. If it is against some rules, I am very sorry and please feel free to lock or remove this thread. Otherwise, it would an interesting discussion on the SED HDD technology.

author: Voodoo 6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 12:33:42 am
content: (This will wipe the drive.) You can try to use diskpart command under the cmd prompt. select the disk in question and use the clean command. If the clean is successful, go into computer management then disk management and partition and format normally. Hope this helps.

author: kc8apf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 01:58:05 am
content: I'm guessing SeaTools isn't hanging. One a secure erase command is sent to the drive, the drive doesn't respond until every LBA has been zero'd. For a 4T disk, that takes nearly a day.Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

author: Voodoo 6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 03:22:38 am
content: If you want to mess around with the FDE you can check out this paper: Full credit goes to the authors of the paper.https://www.blackhat.com/docs/eu-15/materials/eu-15-Boteanu-Bypassing-Self-Encrypting-Drives-SED-In-Enterprise-Environments-wp.pdf

author: Bambur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 07:57:06 am
content: Quote from: kc8apf on August 25, 2016, 01:58:05 amI waited for over 24 hours. The drive is 250 GB.Voodoo 6, I have seen that paper already. The thing is that I do not have a way to get the drive unlocked. If I boot of the drive, WinMagic will run asking for the login and password. However, it will not accept the correct ones. What an evil and crappy software!None of the standard disk partitioning and formatting tools works, since the drive exposes the shadow read-only partition now.It looks like I will throw it to the trash.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 08:29:47 am
content: I like the way you reveal a bit more of the story in each post, it builds more suspense and misdirection that way. Sounds like you're throwing it away which might be the end.But you could always reveal it was installed on a laptop that booted with number lock on, therefore the right half of the keyboard was actually translated as a numberpad when the password was created.That would make a really good twist.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 09:33:13 am
content: Quote from: Bambur on August 24, 2016, 01:42:13 pmThis might mean "this drive has non-standard firmware on it and won't work with anything other than a Dell computer that has matching support".Was common practice in various devices some time ago.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 10:57:43 am
content: I know you're not asking to recover data, but have you tried asking on sites like hddguru?Self-encrypting HDDs are easy to erase, just erase the key and everything will be effectively "erased" as there is no way to decrypt the data again.QuoteThat could be a good place to start reverse-engineering.

author: kc8apf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2016, 01:45:59 pm
content: I missed the part about having a small read-only partition. That requires TCG Opal or Enterprise rather than the more common ATA security. I'm not aware of any free tools for working with TCG. Yes, the PSIG can be used to recover the drive but you need a tool that knows how to speak the protocol first.Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

author: Bambur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2016, 12:59:34 pm
content: Thank you all for the replies and links!As far as I know, Seagate sells this kind of drives to end consumers as well, not to OEM's only, e.g. Dell. Thus, I reckon there should be a way to reset, so to speak, the drive.I am sorry I did not put all the details in the first message initially. I have been looking into this issue for about 3 months already, when I have a free time, and it seems I start to forget bits of what I have tried. Please do not suspect me in anything bad. It just keeps me curious and I do not want to waste an otherwise healthy fast HDD.If I find something interesting, I will post here. Meanwhile, I will try my luck with hddguru

author: Voodoo 6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2016, 03:38:22 am
content: Perhaps this thread will help?http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33398Please keep us posted if you find a solution, its an interesting topic.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2016, 06:42:05 am
content: So, PSID revert fails, have you tried another PC, are you using an internal SATA connection or a USB to SATA bridge device?