How to remove the ATA lock on a Toshiba (MK1060GSC) hard drive?

Question

I have 4 Toshiba hard drives (model MK1060GSC) that are ATA locked. The master password for Toshiba (32 spaces) is not working to unlock the drive and if there is a user password, I have no idea what that is. I do not want or care about the data, I just want to be able to repurpose the hard drives. From what I understand the password is stored on the platters so there has to be a way to wipe it.

I'm using a Knoppix LiveCD v9.1 to boot my older HP desktop (P6570) computer with the Toshiba being the only hard drive attached via SATA cable to the motherboard (not via USB).

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda shows the following for Security:

Security: 
    Master password revision code = 65534
            supported
            enabled
            locked
    not     frozen
    not     expired: security count
    not     supported: enhanced erase
    Security level high
    46min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

No matter what command I issue:

sudo hdparm --security-set-pass tmp /dev/sda
sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-erase tmp /dev/sda
sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass tmp /dev/sda
sudo hdparm --user-master m --security-set-pass tmp /dev/sda

I get the following error:

SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]:  70 00 05 00
00 00 00 0a 04 51 60 00 21 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00

In the computer BIOS I have tried setting the SATA Controller Mode to both IDE and AHCI. This seems to make no difference at all.

How do I remove the ATA lock so I can reuse these drives?

How to remove the ATA lock on a Toshiba (MK1060GSC) hard drive?

0 Answers0