1
Initial situation
I have an Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro with Win 8.1 and 2 hard drives. mSATA Liteon SSD (256 GB) - operating system Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB - Data
More than a year ago I set a password in the BIOS for both hard disks and the BIOS itself (the same for all three). When switching on I was asked for the passwords and after input, the hard disks were unlocked and the system started.
My problem and how it happened. I have working for a while as always and around noon the system hung/crashed, windows not responding then I did a hard reset (pressed long the power key). After that I have restarted and as with every start, the passwords promt for the hard disks pops up. I could unlock the first hard disk, then entered the password for the second hard disk and I get "Incorrect Password" message. Since then I can't unlock the hard drive.
It's been a week now and since then I can't unlock the hard drive and I've read and tried many things but without success.
Summary Samsung Support
I have contact the Samsung Support, that's the result. They claim that they didn't have something like this yet and just offer me to send the SSD to them and they delete it completely after that I can use it again. However, no option for me I need the data.
The ATA security concept knows two different passwords, the user password and the master password. I got this back on the request of the master password:
Unfortunately, we have no instruction on how the ATA security concept works. Please contact the motherboard manufacturer directly and ask how to unlock the hard drive. Unfortunately we don't have a special tool or master passwords. We can only unlock the SSD in our Repair Center.
But according to this document there is such a password
At point 5.2.1 SECURITY (page 11) the master password is mentioned.
5.2.1 SECURITY mode default setting The 840 PRO is shipped with master password set to 20h value (ASCII blanks) and the lock function disabled. The system manufacturer/dealer may set a new master password by using the SECURITY SET PASSWORD command, without enabling the lock function.
However, the support did not react directly to the document.
My attempts to unlock the SSD with hdparm
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB
Serial Number: S1DHNSAD903633N
Firmware Revision: EXT0BB6Q
Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x0039)
Supported: 9 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 9
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 130 130
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 63
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 131040
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 976773168
Logical Sector size: 512 bytes
Physical Sector size: 512 bytes
Logical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytes
device size with M = 1024*1024: 476940 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 500107 MBytes (500 GB)
cache/buffer size = unknown
Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
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 = 1
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
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
SET_MAX security extension
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT
* 64-bit World wide name
Write-Read-Verify feature set
* WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
* Phy event counters
* READ_LOG_DMA_EXT equivalent to READ_LOG_EXT
DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
Device-initiated interface power management
* Asynchronous notification (eg. media change)
* Software settings preservation
* SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
* SCT Write Same (AC2)
* SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
* SCT Features Control (AC4)
* SCT Data Tables (AC5)
* reserved 69[4]
* DOWNLOAD MICROCODE DMA command
* SET MAX SETPASSWORD/UNLOCK DMA commands
* WRITE BUFFER DMA command
* READ BUFFER DMA command
* Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 blocks)
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
enabled
locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
Security level high
2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 8min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50025388a0031dde
NAA : 5
IEEE OUI : 002538
Unique ID : 8a0031dde
Checksum: correct
This article served as help.
I have tried all security-unlock and disable commands with and without --user-master m, and pass the password also as scancode.
sudo hdparm --security-unlock $(printf '\x12\x12\x12\x12\x12\x12') /dev/sdb
Anything without success, always get SG_IO: bad/missing sense data
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo hdparm --security-unlock "password" /dev/sdb
security_password: "password"
/dev/sdb:
Issuing SECURITY_UNLOCK command, password="password", user=user
SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 04 51 40 01 21 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
This is what I found about the code
70 response code=Current information (about the error etc.)
00
05 sense code=Illegal Request
00 00 00 00 (not valid)
0a additional 10 bytes
04 51 40 01 (command specific)
21 04 additional sense code=Unaligned Write Command
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Master passwords I found and tested in every possible length from 1 - 32 characters and also as ScanCode:
- my password
- Blank (" ")
- "ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt" (32 times t)
- h20insyde
Since the security level of the SSD is set to "high" it means that you can unlock the hard disk with the master password without losing the data and according to the master password revision code = 65534 the master password has not been changed and should still have the default value.
I also built the Samsung SSD into an identical notebook and a computer all without success.
The university of texas has published an interesting article Breaking ATA Password Security, they could remove the ATA Password with A-FF Repair Station but I can not try the software because the website is offline, via the web archive I could download the software but you need a login and this can not be created.
I hope one of you can help me to unlock the SSD.
How do you know the SSD is any good? Can you run the Samsung magician software on it? Check the SMART status? It’s possible the firmware is just corrupt. Regardless, it doesn’t sound like anything short of a professional data recovery company might be able to help with. But not likely if the drive is encrypted. – Appleoddity – 2018-09-26T22:38:39.053
S.M.A.R.T. https://i.stack.imgur.com/NxmeH.png
Samsung Magician Status https://i.stack.imgur.com/jSdLq.png
Based on those images it looks like the drive has failed. But I’m unable to read the Samsung magician screen, sorry. The SMART status indicates the drive is failing. – Appleoddity – 2018-09-26T23:43:28.817
Definitely reinforces the importance of having backups. Do you know if the "SG_IO: bad/missing sense data" error means it's just the wrong password? And are the SMART self-tests successful, did the utilities you used run any self-tests, or just read the current historical data? – Xen2050 – 2018-09-27T03:54:55.890
If the password is wrong, the output is
SECURITY_UNLOCK: Input/output error
I will try to run the smart test with an other tool and post the results – Maxim – 2018-09-27T11:28:25.363