How to unlock an SSD disk with hdparm?

Solution 1:

I was able to get this to work on my Western Digital WD20EURS. After piecing together tips from all over Google, I was able to get a master password, research the commands of hdparm, and use your example in your original question to resolve my issue. Maybe this will help you too.

First off, I found a list of master passwords for various brands of drives.

Here are two locations, (replaced with Web Archive versions to avoid link rot)

• List of hard disk ATA master passwords
• How to remove password from your hard disk

My method:

• Used ESCAPE to cancel Bios HD password request.
• Booted into CentOS7 CLI (previously installed yum install hdparm)
• Command hdparm -I /dev/sda to check if drive was "locked" ( -I is capital i )
• Command hdparm --user-master m --security-unlock PASS /dev/sda
  • m = using master password
  • PASS = for me, typing 'WDC' ten times, with a finishing 'W'
    • found this password in the links listed above
• Command hdparm -I /dev/sda again ( -I is capital i ). This time the drive showed "not locked" (at which I hesitantly rejoiced)
• Command hdparm --user-master m --security-disable PASS /dev/sda
  • This should disable the password on the hard drive and allow you to boot without needing a password next time.
• Then I put the drive back into my Windows machine. I was able to see all the partitions in the drive, erase them, and use this new drive!

Solution 2:

Try using the master password to secure-erase the disk. Performing a secure erase will reset the user password. You can find lists of default master passwords by vendor through google searches. For example, this web site may be useful:

https://ipv5.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/list-of-hard-disk-ata-master-passwords/