On 11-04-30 04:10 AM, Maciej Grela wrote: > 2011/4/30 Mark Lord <kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>: >> >> Okay. Now please do exactly this (and I mean EXACTLY): >> >> 1. shut down and completely power off the system. >> 2. boot up again, and immediately do "hdparm --Istdout /dev/sdb >> and post the results here. >> >> I want to see what the default security state of the drive is, >> and that sequence above will tell all. >> > > Hi, > > Here is the data: .. > Security: > Master password revision code = 65534 > supported > enabled > locked > not frozen > not expired: security count > not supported: enhanced erase > Security level high > 42min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. .. Okay, your drive already has a password set on it. So to do a --security-erase, you will likely need to know and supply that exact password on the command line: hdparm --security-erase XXXXXXXX /dev/sdb If you don't know the password, then you can try this: hdparm --security-set-pass NULL --user-master m /dev/sdb hdparm --security-erase NULL --user-master m /dev/sdb If that also fails, then you'll have to read through the ATA security feature documentation (from the t13 standards), and try and understand how the quirky state machine model for it is supposed to work. And then puzzle it out from there. Not all drives do it in exactly the same way, and not all of them strictly follow the standard. So it may take some playing around to figure it out. I don't do this often enough here to remember which brands prefer what sequences etc. Cheers -ml -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html