Cannot Unlock ATA Security Locked Hard Drive Locked During Secure Erase

Question

As stated in the title, I’ve got an ATA security-locked hard drive that I cannot seem to unlock. The locking happened after I started an ATA security-enhanced erase from Ubuntu’s Disks utility. The power went out in the middle of the process and upon the next boot, I could not do anything with the drive other than view its SMART status. I’ve chased a number of leads and tried some solutions that have worked for others in a similar predicament, but haven’t found any success. (I don’t know the exact nature of the problem, so I’m posting here rather than AskUbuntu.)

Output of SeaChest_Erase -d PD1 -i (the Seagate-supplied software for manipulating its hard drives):

Solutions that other people have tried:

• Seagate ST9250315AS interrupted during a secure erase: fixed with Victoria unlocking the drive with the password used to initiate the secure erase
• Crucial BX100 bricked by setting a password before secure erase: had to RMA the drive due to the particular drive’s bad implementation of secure erase
• Kingston SSD locked due to user error with hdparm: issued another command sudo hdparm --user-master m --security-erase "" /dev/sda which erased the drive and brought it back to an unlocked state.
• Drive locked after a seemingly successful secure erase with PartedMagic: issued a hdparm --security-disable NULL /dev/sda command to remove the lock.
• Seagate ST3000DM01 and Western Digital WD30EFRX drives locked after using a Synology enclosure’s built-in secure erase: unlocked the Western Digital drives using master password found on the internet, but the Seagate drive could only be unlocked with hdparm --security-disable synology /dev/sda.

From the way the others solved their lock-out problem, I assume I will have to get/do any of 5 things:

• The master password for a Seagate ST12000VN0007 (or just my particular drive)
• The user password set by the Ubuntu Disk utility during the secure erase
• The user password I might have accidentally set while fiddling with Victoria or hdparm
• A specific hardware adapter in combination with one of the above
• Wait 24 hours with the drive being active to see if the erasure completes

But I find it unlikely that I set the password myself since all unlocking and password setting actions resulted in failure messages. Parted Magic uses “password” as the password. Synology uses “synology” as the lock password. Does Ubuntu’s Disks utility use some known default password in the background to lock the drive? Would the drive automatically resume erasing to completion if left alone?

Answer 1

Both these links were helpful to me in solving the issue:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=271260

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1120971/gnome-disks-utility-locked-hdd

This was the command I used:

sudo hdparm --security-disable xxxx /dev/sd?

Simply replace the question mark with the letter which designates your locked drive.

"lsblk" should tell you which one it is.