Slashdot Mirror
Unlocking a Travelstar 2.5" HDD?
Rogerborg writes "So, I buy a used 6.5Gb IBM Travelstar on eBay, only to find that I didn't caveat emptor enough, and it's password protected. No problem, I'll just, uh... uh... what will I do? According to this discussion at geek.com, the password is stored on the platter, not the controller, so swapping controllers won't help. If the controller finds a password, it refuses all access to the disk. Mounting the drive as a slave in an IDE converter, I can't fdisk, format or otherwise access it under Linux. DOS won't even recognize that the drive is there. I've even tried it in a freaky system running VxWorks. The drive mounts, but can't be accessed or formatted." How rude! Are there any utils out there that can be used to unlock the device so it can be used?
"The IBM tech sheet for a similar drive notes that there is a "security erase unit" command... but it's also password protected! I can't find any further info on the IBM site, but apparently their recommendation is to use password locked Travelstars as paperweights.
"Nortek can remove the password from Travelstars using black magic and chicken sacrifices (or a custom controller?) but will charge more than the price of the drive for even for a basic unlock that destroys the data.
I have to admit that I'm impressed by this security, but it renders the drive useless far too easily. Can Slashdot suggest any way to remove the password (the data can go too), short of degaussing the platters or building a custom controller?"
My personal paranoia and suspicions aside, who would sell their HD to a stranger *without* first wiping the disk?
Well, a local dot-com went out of business recently, and auctioned off almost all of their corporate and development servers (including the Visual SourceSafe repository) without wiping the drives. I've also bought an un-wiped computer from a consignment shop. So I wouldn't automatically assume that the laptop in question was stolen.