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I got hold of an old Dell E6410 laptop which had in it a hardware FDE Seagate Momentus 7200 FDE2 hard drive, and I want to install Linux on this machine.
When I boot from a USB drive running Linux live, the attached disk shows only one partition - the MBR, of size 128 MB. The laptop boots, there's no BIOS level password set for the harddisk. After POST, a disk encryption prompt pointing to "wave.com" (For Wave Systems Disk Encryption) comes up and after keying in the right username and password, the disk is unlocked and it boots to Win 7 which is installed. Now I intend to knock off Windows and run Linux. But once Linux boots, there's no disk to clean/unlock at all. hdparm seems to fails in unlocking the drive as it reports that it is already unlocked. I searched on hddgurus, Dell & Seagate and various other forums to no avail, and wave apparently shut down and they do not have any support anymore.
fdisk shows
Disk /dev/sdb: 134 MB, 134217216 bytes
5 heads, 52 sectors/track, 1008 cylinders, total 262143 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x01e85800
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 16450550 8225275 0 Empty
From hdparm -I <device> I get the below with respect to disk security.
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
Complete hdparm result is below.
ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: ST9250414ASG
Serial Number: 5VG6TSWD
Firmware Revision: DED1
Transport: Serial
Standards:
Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x0029)
Supported: 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 8
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 16383
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 63
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
LBA user addressable sectors: 262144
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 262144
Logical/Physical Sector size: 512 bytes
device size with M = 1024*1024: 128 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 134 MBytes
cache/buffer size = 16384 KBytes
Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 7200
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 32
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 1 Current = ?
Advanced power management level: 128
Recommended acoustic management value: 208, current value: 208
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Advanced Power Management feature set
* Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT
* WRITE_DMA_QUEUED_FUA_EXT
* 64-bit World wide name
* IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
Write-Read-Verify feature set
* WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Free-fall Control feature set
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
* Host-initiated interface power management
* Phy event counters
Device-initiated interface power management
* Software settings preservation
* SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
* SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
* SCT Features Control (AC4)
* SCT Data Tables (AC5)
unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
**Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase**
52min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 5000c50029b97722
NAA : 5
IEEE OUI : 000c50
Unique ID : 029b97722
Checksum: correct
Particularly, the section
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
hdparm --security-unlock or --security-disable doesn't seem to work since the disk is showing only one partition and that doesn't have anything set.
hdparm forums mentioned that Master password revision code = 65534 implies the master password (which as given at https://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/FDE.2ProdManual.pdf, "The ATA master password is set to the Security ID (SID)." ) is available. But since none of the tools (hdparm, or even the Embassy Security Centre TDM) are usable to get the drive to disable hardware based FDE.
Any hints on how best to proceed? Would I be better off throwing the disk away and using a new one?
It's a totally unused 250 GB 7.2K rpm drive and throwing it away seems very wasteful.
ksvrgh
Posted 2018-02-10T09:33:15.803
Reputation: 11