Now we type in the console "PWD".
The program will ask you to enter the password "Type password max 32sym-".
Carefully enter a password from any printable characters, it is permissible to enter numbers, spaces and punctuation marks.

As with any low-level access, it is undesirable to enter Cyrillic characters.
The number of characters must not exceed 32.
Try not to confuse anything, otherwise, forgetting the password, you risk losing the drive!

After entering, press .
The password through the interface will go to the hard drive.

By pressing , you will see that the message has changed to "Security: High, ON", and at the top, in fiery letters, a terrible word has been displayed: "PWD".
However, the password will not take effect immediately, but only after the power is turned off.

The next time you turn on the computer, the internal firmware of the hard drive will restart, and it will be blocked.
Such a drive will be correctly recognized by the BIOS, but when you try to boot from it, write or read information, a very steep bummer will occur: the hard drive will reject any actions related to access to its information zone.

And neither a disk editor, nor low-level formatting, nor connecting to another computer, or even rearranging the controller from another hard drive will help here!

The password is stored on pancakes, in the area of ​​engineering cylinders, accessible only in the technological mode.
And where exactly it is located, only manufacturers and repairmen of hard drives know - most likely, an ordinary user will not be able to remove the password.

A hard drive with a password can be left connected to the computer, the system will not see it when booting (but it will be present in the list of devices).
This is very convenient if the computer has several hard drives.
And if there is only one hard drive, then MHDD can be loaded from a floppy disk - this way you turn it into electronic key to the hard drive.

We figured out the installation, but now how to remove it?
To do this, MHDD has two commands: "UNLOCK" and "DISPWD".

The first command does not remove the password, but only prepares the hard drive for its removal.
The second one takes off.
In both cases, the correct password must be entered.

Consider an example (Fig. 5).

Fig 5. Removing the password from the hard drive

Having selected the hard drive we need through + and pressing , we enter “UNLOCK” into the console.
When asked to enter a password, enter it.
The program will answer "Done", even if the password was entered incorrectly.
Then we type "DISPWD" and again enter the password for the request.
We press .

If in both cases the password was entered correctly, the hard drive will be immediately unlocked, which can be verified by pressing - the fiery inscription "PWD" should disappear.

If the password was incorrect, "Fail" will appear.
After five incorrect attempts, the hard drive stops responding to commands, issuing "Fail" in any case - you need to turn off and turn on the power to resume work.
Therefore, be very careful when choosing a password - it is a hardware one, and if you lose it, you will lose your hard drive as a physical device!

How reliable is such protection?
From a simple user - 100%.
The password cannot be bypassed without special technological programs which, of course, do not apply.

It cannot be "dropped", as is often done with forgotten password in motherboard BIOS boards.
But an ATA password will not save a professional - it can be deleted by those who have access to the service area of ​​the hard drive, for example, repairmen, or owners of the PC3000 hardware and software complex.

There are other programs for working with the ATA functions of hard drives, such as the ATA Security Tool, which has great capabilities.
The kit includes excellent documentation in Russian, which is very useful to read for everyone who is interested in working with HDD ATA passwords.

Repair Options

Since the article “Unclean on the hard - away from BADs” has already been written about hiding bad blocks, we will not repeat ourselves.
That article described working with version 2743.
But due to the fact that the author of the program is constantly developing new methods for solving HDD problems for ordinary users, new versions of MHDD appear at machine gun speed.
And in each - new features, often unparalleled in other programs.

So it happened this time - in the surface scanning menu, called through, a new option "ERASE WAITs" appeared.
It is designed to quickly remove soft-bads without losing information.
As we already wrote, soft bads are incorrectly written sectors that do not have the checksum of the data field with its real content.
This happens especially often on IBM DTLA hard drives.

When the hard drive controller stumbles upon such a "miracle", he notices a mismatch, and thinking that the bad block is physical, he tries to correct the error.
To do this, the hard drive reads the sector many times, waiting for a match, but it fails, and it issues an "UNCR" error on the interface.
For the OS, this looks like a bad block, although in fact it is not there - it is enough to rewrite the sector with anything for the screw to recalculate the checksum and thereby “cure” it.

For a long time, this was done by completely clearing the surface of information by “low-level” formatting of the media - forcing zeros to be written to all sectors.

But firstly, this led to the complete destruction of information, and secondly, it took a very long time.
But what if soft-bads were formed on some important text file?
Due to a single defective sector, it became impossible to copy this file - the OS did not allow it.

Now this is possible thanks to the "ERASE WAITs" option, which fixes such files, making them able to be read without errors.

It works like this:
if during surface scanning the program finds a bad block (the hard drive gives an error), a reset command is sent to the controller, followed by an attempt to write to the sector that caused this error.
The reset command is needed so that the hard drive does not “grunt” on each bad sector for several seconds, but immediately proceeds to recording or remapping.

If the hard drive is teeming with a huge number of bads, then this saves time on checking the surface dozens of times, the bads disappear, but the information remains.
True, the contents of those sectors where there were bad blocks are irretrievably lost, and the files belonging to them will turn out to be slightly corrupted.
But it does not matter much - all the same, the information in the bads was incorrect.

In the case of text files, this is quite acceptable, and they are the most important when saving information.
But in the future, these files will be read without errors and they can be easily rewritten to another disk.

Rice. 6. Surface scan and repair options

Conclusion

That's all for now.
Read carefully the documentation for this wonderful program, write to its author, and we hope that your hard drive there will never be unsolvable problems.

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Driver 19.9.2 Optional

The new AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 19.9.2 Optional driver improves performance in Borderlands 3 and adds support for Radeon Image Sharpening.

R.tester( latest version) - a small application for diagnosing hard drives, flash drives, SSDs, hybrid drives (SSHD) and other storage media.

It involves two types of testing:

• For advanced users, a set of diagnostic tools is available to gather information about the device and its status. Then interpret it yourself.
• For beginners - automatic testing algorithm "Quick Diag", after polling the user, plans and executes a sequence of tests. Then he makes assumptions about the presence and nature of faults. The results of the "Quick Diag" algorithm are evaluative in nature and are intended to provide a rough idea of ​​the problem.

The set and parameters of launched tests depend on the type and model of the device, as well as on the information provided by the user during the survey.

The interpretation of test results and the generation of assumptions are based on a set of rules that may differ depending on the type of device, its manufacturer and model. The rules are described in the Lua program code format and are loaded as needed from the corresponding library files.

For the safety of user data, a write lock and active prompts are provided if the user selects potentially unsafe tools/options.

Application features:

• Supported storage types: HDD, SSD, SSHD, USB Flash / USB SSD.
• Supported interface types:
  • ATA - universal (PATA, SATA, ZIF, CE-ATA, etc.);
  • SCSI - universal (SCSI, SAS, FC-AL, SSA, iSCSI);
  • USB - universal (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt).
• Analysis of the state of the drive in offline mode (Quick Diag tool).
• Support for hot-plug devices "on the fly" regardless of interface type.
• Determination of the real brand of HDD / SSD (manufacturer) and the vendor-family of the drive.
• Identification of the USB flash controller (IC) and installed NAND memory (Flash ID).
• Protection of system drives by hiding by S / N and / or physical path in the OS.
• Support for TCG (SED / BDE / FDE / FIPS, etc.) encryption subsystems, including unofficial cases (Seagate SeaCOS / DriveTrust, Toshiba DRM, etc.).
• Support for vendor-specific encryption subsystem in drives western digital with USB interface. Working with devices via vendor-specific access protocols for most common USB bridges and PCI adapters helps the utility bypass many limitations in Windows drivers and/or in the adapters themselves.
• Viewing passport data of drives in a convenient form and taking into account the specifics of the interface.
• Viewing S.M.A.R.T. in a convenient form and taking into account the specifics of different manufacturers and interfaces.
• Viewing S.M.A.R.T. Error Logs for ATA-compatible drives in a convenient form and an interpreter of all standard ATA commands.
• Convenient access to SCSI Mode Page / Vital Product Data (VPD) / Logs configuration parameters, including cases of their emulation in drivers and USB adapters.
• CERT Tool Lite is a script machine for testing drives in automatic mode, with support for graphs, G-List defect monitoring and temperature.
• ATA & SCSI Command Exerciser - tools for direct submission of any ATA and SCSI commands in manual mode.
• ATA Security Tool - a tool for working with the Security subsystem: removing/setting a password, (un)locking a drive (if the connection interface allows).
• SCSI Drive Self-Test is a tool for running DST tests and viewing a log of previous test results.

Attention! At the moment, the program is in the α-testing stage. The "Quick Diag" functionality is implemented only for hard drives.

In fact, a detailed description of the operation of the security system is well described in the ATA-5 standard and above. Also, a more convenient, in my opinion, presentation is present in the Product Manual on any IBM disk.

I will try to explain the essence in two words.
Master password - unique code, which is stored in the firmware area of ​​the drive, sometimes in encrypted form. On some hard drives it is present after exiting the assembly line and does not affect hard drive access. The master password is designed to remove the set user password (for example, if it is forgotten).
Some manufacturers have their own Master password for a specific drive family ( the lineup). For other manufacturers, on the contrary, the Master password can cover quite a few models and lines. Any information about Master passwords is not subject to open distribution and is the property of the manufacturer.
User password is a code up to 32 characters long, entered by the user using special utilities or with the corresponding function Computer BIOS(present, basically, only in NoteBook). The password is also stored in the firmware area of ​​the drive and is also sometimes encrypted.
---
The security level can be High or Maximum.
1. At the High level, it is possible to unlock the drive using the Master Password, in this case, all user data is saved.
2. At the High level, it is possible to unlock the drive using a User password, in this case all user data is also saved.
3. At the Maximum level, the drive can be unlocked using the Master Password, but user data is completely destroyed without the possibility of recovery.
4. At the Maximum level, it is possible to unlock the drive using a User password, while the user data is completely preserved.
Accordingly, if the drive's security mode is activated, and neither Master nor User passwords are known, the drive cannot be unlocked. A locked drive must be correctly detected in the BIOS, however, it will generate an error for any read or write operation. And brute-force password guessing with the help of self-made utilities is excluded - after five incorrect attempts, the drive goes into the Freeze state and can only be exited by turning the power off and on again. (http://www.hddr.ru/faq.htm)

Small caveat: If you set a user-password in MHDD ver.4.0 (appears on Maxtor screws, possibly on others) for "FAST ERASE", then after this operation you should REMOVE the password WITHOUT REBOOT, because. it is possible that after a reboot the password cannot be removed using the MHDD itself.

So, the password is set by us.
MHDD -> read the documentation and remove using the unlock and dispwd commands. In this case, the data will be saved. (the password is removed by the _same_ version of the program that was set)

Another option: After loading mhdd, turn off the power and try to remove the password, i.e.:
1. Download mhdd.
2. Remove power from the screw.
3. Insert it back.
4. Dial unlock and enter the password that you set.

You can also try the ATAPWD program (http://rockbox.haxx.se/atapwd.zip):

1. ATAPWD: UNLOCK WITH USER/MASTER PASSWORD. The data will be saved.
2. ATAPWD: First, do ERASE PREPARE (Preparing to remove the user password by completely erasing the disk), then - ERASE UNIT. The data will, of course, be destroyed.

Empty password.
Dmitry_Postrigan: An empty password in MHDD can be removed by entering the character with the code 255 as a password (press ALT + dial 255 + release ALT). (- mhddsoftware forum).

We do not know the password (forgotten/lost/etc):

SAMSUNG
MHDD: You can try to enter 32 characters "B" (large and Latin) to ask for a password.
VTOOL: In the disk editor mode, find in the negative sectors a sector with the text "SECURE" and clear it (except for the word Secure) and one more sector - a copy of the 1st.

SEAGATE
Master password- "Seagate + 25 spaces".
The presence of a terminal (you need to make a cable) will greatly simplify the solution to the problem.
In terminal:
CTRL-Z
T>GFFF3 (for Barracuda V)
T>/1
1>B200,200
There you will see your password. Then ATA commands F2 and F6 with a buffer containing what you saw ....

Also for U5, Barracuda II, III, IV, you only need to read B0,0.
For 7200.7 you need to enter GFFF2.

WD
Master password- "WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD".
xB-series:
"The password is at the end of the second sector on track -2 in the clear."
Hddl: 57 44 43 00 00 A0 8A - send, 00 01 01 00 0F E0 21 - send, clipboard - receive, view - at the end. 00 01 01 10 0F E0 21 - the same, but for the first head.

for WD307AA 272AA, 450AA and 205AA:
"The password is at the end of the third sector on track -1 in the clear."
Hddl: 00 00 00 00 E0 A0 8A - send, 00 01 02 00 0F E0 21 - send, clipboard - receive, view - at the end. 00 01 02 10 0F E0 21 - the same, but for the first head.

Fujitsu
fakel.exe: count the modules and look at #12 and #13.
PC3K: You can rewrite module 0D.

MAXTOR
Master passwords- "Maxtor INIT SECURITY TEST STEP" (for N40P), "Maxtor+26 spaces" (541D).

IBM
Can be used HDDL:. Read the documentation for this program.

PS. There are other effective programs (eg PC3000). If it was not possible to remove the password using the above methods, then your path lies to the owner of these products. I also advise you to use search engines on this topic. there is a lot of information on the net.

More utilities:
Complex

HDD is locked on Seagate 80 GB. I tried both the ATA security tool (where can I find out the user password?) and editpc3k (by the way, it does not see the disk at all). The regular Seagate utility writes that the disk is password protected.

If you have additional questions about recovery issues, ask a question and we will answer you at the specified e-mail address.

First, a little about the password protection of hard drives.

All modern hard drives have a security system, it is described in the ATA-5 and higher standards. The drive can be set to two levels of security:

• maximum

There are two passwords:

• Master password This is a combination of alphanumeric characters that is written to the firmware area of ​​the drive, sometimes in encrypted form, when the disc is manufactured at the factory. Different manufacturers have their own Master passwords, as for different models HDD, and for a whole range of models and lines. Information about Master passwords is not subject to free distribution and is the know-how of the HDD manufacturer.
• User password This is a similar combination of characters, but is entered by the user using system utilities or by using the appropriate function in the BIOS of the computer. Such BIOS functions are available mainly only in laptops. This password is also stored in the firmware area of ​​the drive and can also be encrypted.

A disk's service area, often referred to as SA (system area), refers to information on the drive's service tracks inside the HDA. Access to this zone of the disk is possible only with the help of special tools, for example, using the PC-3000 complex. On some forums there are "tips" for removing the password by changing the drive controller board from a similar drive, this is not so. And such a replacement of controllers on modern disks is mainly useless and even dangerous!

If the drive is in High level, it is possible to unlock the drive using both Master password, and with the help User password, All user data is saved.
But if maximum protection is set ( maximum level), then access to the data can only be obtained using User password. Input Master password allows you to unlock HDD, but at the same time user data is completely destroyed without the possibility of recovery.
A locked drive is correctly detected by the BIOS, but it throws an error on any read or write operation. A similar symptom is also observed in case of violation of the service area of ​​the disk with translation tables, but in this case it has nothing to do with password locking.

The fact that a password has been set is determined by the flags located in one of the sectors of the hard drive's SA. In case of failure to read this sector, and Master and User passwords may also be located there, it is impossible to unlock the drive by conventional means. It is necessary to have special tools for repairing and programming hard drives.