Remove the password from the disk. Removing the ATA password from the screw (unlock ATA password HDD). List of known Master passwords

How to Recover deleted files is not a problem; there are dozens of utilities for this. But what if the drive is damaged, has an erroneous geometry description, or is locked with a controller-level password? Then the Victoria utility comes to the rescue. It is written in assembler, takes up a few kilobytes and works directly with the controller.

FROM MS-DOS TO WINDOWS 10

Victoria was conceived as a tool for advanced diagnostics of drives (then - hard drives, and today also SSD) and managing settings for their operation through low-level commands. Belarusian programmer Sergei Kazansky developed it for ten years and released his own set of utilities for data recovery. During this time, many commercial releases from Victoria were released, several free versions̆ and one unofficial one, which we will pay special attention to.

Victoria was originally a disk utility for MS-DOS, written in assembly language. The ancient operating system was better suited than Windows due to the fact that
In a single-tasking environment, it is easier to provide exclusive access to the disk. With the advent of support for the porttalk.sys driver version 4.xx, Victoria has learned to work in the WinPE multitasking environment, as well as in Windows from XP to 10 of any bit size. It has become easier to launch it, the actions in the graphical interface have become clearer, and the operating mode itself has changed. But here's the problem: without understanding the new features of the program, some users began to lose data and entire disks instead of restoring them. Therefore, the latest official version 4.46b has developed “fool protection”.

By default, only non-destructive operations with drives are available. This is not just a read-only mode, as in other utilities that access the HDD/SSD using the Windows driver. Victoria also blocks the ability to change HPA (and screw up the disk geometry) and accidentally start low level formatting and “shoot yourself in the foot” in more sophisticated ways.

Victoria - maximum universal utility. It accesses any type of storage device (HDD, SSD, USB Flash) and with any ATA-compatible interface. Its job is to transmit ATA commands to any device that supports them. Therefore, everything that has been said about Victoria's job with disk drives is also true for solid-state drives, with the exception of what relates to their design features. It is clear that for an SSD it is pointless to watch the spindle spin-up time and try to control the head positioning speed - it has neither one nor the other. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to test and even restore an SSD using Victoria.

Recover data on hard drive using VICTORIA 4.47

This version was made in 2013 by a programmer from Moscow Oleg Shcherbakov. He patched the latest official Victoria 4.46b build. It's better to download (zip). On this site Shcherbakov published it along with the source codes of the patches. Other resources can distribute anything under the guise of the new “Victoria”.

Although Victoria is far from new program, there were also critical errors in it that required correction. One of them led to the fact that running Victoria in 64-bit Windows versions it was impossible. Another could cause problems when working with large disks. If the volume was higher than a terabyte, then Victoria 4.46b simply spent all the virtual memory on drawing and color marking the LBA blocks being checked. In version 4.47 Shcherbakov fixed all this.

Victoria has two operating modes: PIO (Programmed Input/Output) and API (Application Prgoramming Interface). In PIO mode, the drive controller is polled by the program through the porttalk.sys driver. If you select API, operating system tools will be used. Disk performance in PIO mode is reduced because DMA and high-level read and write optimizations are not supported. However, PIO mode allows you to use all the features of Victoria and send any ATA commands directly to the disk controller, bypassing the OS and standard drivers. It is through PIO that they most often work with disks in data recovery laboratories. Victoria supports both drives with the modern SATA interface and the old ones - PATA (often mistakenly called IDE). Victoria can work with external drives(features will be described below).

Having selected the PIO mode, at the beginning of work you need to scan the bus and identify the disk controllers using the PCI-Scan button. To the right of it, a window for selecting a disk port is displayed. Internal ones are usually detected without problems, but for external drives you will first have to find out their port numbers. This can be done in the hardware properties or in any diagnostic program (for example, AIDA64). After this, you need to manually set the port in Victoria. Also, even at the scanning stage, you can check the All dev (all devices) checkbox and use the exclusion method to find the desired disk in the list of found ones.

It is advisable to use the PIO mode specifically for low level commands. A simple search for bad sectors and their reassignment to the spare area of ​​the disk is much faster (but less reliable) in API mode.

The API mode restrictions are as follows: you cannot set or remove ATA passwords; work with the Host Protected Area and viewing registers are also disabled. If any of these functions are needed, you can switch to PIO mode. However, there are times when PIO mode is not available. This happens when using older versions of Victoria on 64-bit OSes. Another reason could be errors in working with the porttalk.sys driver or the selection of the SATA AHCI mode in the BIOS/UEFI. There is a guaranteed way out of the situation as follows.

1. We record with WinPE x86 and place it on it Victoria program simple copying.
2. Connect the desired drive to the SATA/PATA port, if you have not already done so.
3. Disable all other HDDs or SSDs (optional).
4. Go to CMOS setup, switch the SATA controller mode from AHCI to compatible (compatible, native or IDE).
5. Download WinPE. If necessary, we install drivers, including porttalk.
6. We launch Victoria in PIO mode, initialize the desired HDD or SSD and execute the necessary command.

Settings can be set via the GUI or in the vcr40.ini file. The same file will help to remove the blocking of work with the primary port. By default, it is enabled in order to protect the system disk from accidental modification. To be able to select Primary in the list of ports, you need to do two things:

1. Disable the “only non-destructive functions” option and close the program.
2. In the section of the vcr40.ini file, add the line Enable PM=1, save the changes and restart the program.

PORTTALK

The latest versions of Victoria can automatically install the porttalk driver, but it is completely useless on 64-bit systems. The fact is that for the sake of greater security, they removed a couple of functions that are necessary for porttalk and Victoria to work. Therefore, the porttalk driver (and, accordingly, the PIO mode) only works on 32-bit versions of Windows, which have the Ke386SetIoAccessMap and Ke386IoSetAccessProcess functions.

EXTERNAL STORAGES

External drives are regular laptop (2.5′′) or desktop (3.5′′) models in containers with USB and FireWire interfaces. They are equipped with various controllers with the general name “SATA bridge”. Many of these bridges do not broadcast low-level commands. Therefore, with some external drives Victoria can immediately work in PIO mode in the same way as with internal drives, and with others you will have to suffer first. In the simplest case, it will be enough to remove the disk itself from the case (do not open the HDA!) and connect it to the port directly.

SATA hard drive without SATA port

Western Digital and, possibly, other manufacturers produced some external hard drives with a soldered SATA - USB bridge. Therefore, they do not have a regular SATA connector. However, they can still be connected directly to the port by soldering a SATA cable to the pins on the drive board. To understand whether your disk belongs to such a series, you will have to disassemble it, or google by model number and look for datasheets.

HDD password recovery

One of the most popular low-level commands in PIO mode is working with passwords. According to ATA certifications, disk access can be restricted using a password. It is set by the user from the BIOS or using external utilities. There is also a master password preset by the manufacturer. The drive can only be locked using a user password. If you have forgotten it, you can remove the lock using the master password.

Depending on the specified security level, the result of entering the master password will be different. At a high level, the master password acts the same as the user password. It just unlocks the drive and that's it. If the maximum security level is set (max), then entering a master password instead of a user password will lead to unlocking the disk only after complete erasure all data on it (secure erase).

Working with ATA passwords is also complicated by the fact that according to the standard they always consist of 32 bytes (no matter how long you specify it). Extra characters are ignored, and missing ones are added automatically. The problem is that different programs they are added in different ways. Standard security utilities on some laptops are especially guilty of this. Instead of traditional zeros (or at least spaces), they use non-printable characters. The code 00h cannot be entered from the keyboard at all (even through (ALT)+code). There is only one way out: do not enter the password in the program window, but read it from the file. Any characters can be written to a file using a hex editor.

Often the user cannot unlock the drive even when he enters the correct password. If you change a laptop or lose the standard utility, any other one (for example, HDDL) will add up to 32 bytes to the password with its own characters.

There is also a preliminary modification of the password. On many laptops it is actually encrypted before it is sent to the controller. Usually these are the simplest logical operations, but this doesn’t make it any easier. The user thinks that this is a password he knows, while in reality the controller accepts a completely different one. If you have tried all the options for the proposed user and standard master passwords, but have not achieved any results, then there is only one way out - take the drive to the laboratory, where they will work with it in technological mode.

HOW to get back a lost terabyte

Sometimes Victoria's ability to work in PIO mode with HPA (Host Protected Area) - a service memory area in which the disk geometry is recorded - is very helpful. It determines the storage capacity by specifying it as the number of LBA blocks.

There was an interesting case in my practice. I received a standard complaint: “the computer does not turn on” (read, the OS does not load). The owner complained that he had been suffering for about a month. First, he visited all the service centers, then invited various Enikey people - to no avail. I came, looked and also thought deeply. All components are in good condition. The disk is detected in the BIOS, but booting from it does not work. I launched Linux from a flash drive. The hard drive is visible, but logical partitioning utilities show a strange picture: 64 MB of total volume and one partition with an unknown file system.

And then I realized that the HPA had simply failed on the hard drive. As a result, a terabyte disk began to be defined as a 64-megabyte stub. I switched the SATA port mode from AHCI to compatible in CMOS setup, took a USB flash drive with WinPE and launched Victoria in PIO mode. Next, I sent the NHPA command (restore factory volume).

Usually in such cases it is possible to instantly restore the passport value of LBA blocks, but this time the miracle did not happen. So I found service utility for hard drives of this series and sent a similar command to restore HPA from it. A terabyte of data returned from oblivion on the next reboot.

Why did Victoria fail? I assume because this disk had some specific features unknown to me or the universal program.

BAD SECTORS HDD

Most often, Victoria is used to find and fix bad sectors. If everything is fine with the disk’s HPA and there is no password protection, but no utilities can read files from it in a reasonable time, then it’s time to perform a surface test. Victoria can do this in any mode (PIO/API) using sector-by-sector reading (read), writing (write) and writing with verification (verify).

When restoring data, you can use read-only, but its options also vary. The simplest of them is sequential: from the first block to the last. The starting and ending LBA values ​​can be specified manually, which is convenient for many reasons. Firstly, this makes it possible to check disks of any size, simply by performing the test in fragments of up to one terabyte. Secondly, you can re-check the suspicious area and exclude external factors. Victoria analyzes the time it takes to access the sector. Typically, for new disks it does not exceed 5 ms for 80% of sectors. Sectors with a polling time of less than 50 ms are also considered normal. Those for which it is measured in hundreds of milliseconds are candidates for bad sectors.

If the sector was counted after a few seconds, then this is a clear bad block. The disk controller must independently identify such disks during idle time and replace them in the address table with good sectors from the reserve area. However, in practice this does not always happen. Victoria can ask the hard drive to perform such an operation (Remap) for those sectors that have not responded to requests for too long. Formally, part of the information is lost during this procedure, but in reality it was already lost at the moment when the sector became faulty.

In the paid version of Victoria, the Restore function was available - an attempt to read data from a bad sector at any cost and then rewrite it to a good sector. However, the program has not been officially supported since 2008, so purchase it full version Not sure it's going to happen. Free Victoria has come to the rescue more than once by restoring HPA, resetting passwords, and eliminating bad sectors that caused other data recovery programs to freeze.

HOW free Victoria saved a secret job

I'll share one more story with you. Laboratory at a research institute, our time. The analytical instrument is controlled from the computer that came with it. The computer comes pre-installed with very specific software that the developers no longer support. There is no distribution kit either on the disk or on the website. There is only installed program, and it stopped working. The laboratory carried out research under a multi-year government contract. Without the miracle device, the employees found themselves tied hand and foot. We struggled and found out that the problem was with the disk. From ancient times it became covered with bad things, and normal work became impossible. An attempt to make a disk clone by skipping bad sectors was unsuccessful - the cloning program froze. We ran the disk through the Victoria test with the Remap function. We have pre-selected the necessary settings. By the evening of the same day, we successfully removed the disk image, and then restored everything from it to a new hard drive. The device came to life, the contract was completed on time.

Victoria has four methods and three types of surface testing (twelve modes in total). In each it automatically calculates total number defective blocks and writes their addresses to the log. Like a disk editor, Victoria can show the contents of sectors and allows you to change them. In PIO mode, Victoria displays information about logical partitions on the media even if it is not detected at all in the BIOS. No utility with API access is capable of this.

Additionally, Victoria can control the level of acoustic noise of the disk (AAM), adjusting the speed of movement of its heads during search, launch low-level formatting, change the HDD capacity and run benchmarks. It can even be used to check the physical interface (the status of cables and ports). At home, it will save an HDD or SSD in many difficult situations, except for severe ones mechanical damagĕ requiring opening of the hermetic unit. The laboratory will cope with them too, using Victoria as one of the proven utilities.

Good afternoon, dear blog readers! Today we’ll talk about something less common, but important. More than once I have encountered such a problem as setting a password on HDD or BIOS. Probably many people don’t quite understand, and perhaps they don’t understand at all what I mean. Now I will explain in more detail.

BIOS password

Bios is software, located in a read-only memory device (ROM), engaged in self-testing of devices and searching for the bootloader. Naturally, the functionality of the BIOS is much broader than described above, but we won’t dig deep, but will look directly at the topic of our article. The BIOS password is set to avoid manipulation by third parties.

How to remove the BIOS password

The set bios password does not make it possible to get into it and in this case there are three options for solving this situation: by removing the CMOS battery on the motherboard, move the CMOS jumper (jumper) on the motherboard in the opposite direction (not provided in laptops) or simply close the jumper contacts .

And the last way to remove the BIOS password is using the online service BIOS Password Removal for Laptops. If you know the password and you just don’t feel comfortable entering it all the time, you can disable it by going into the settings.

HDD password

Here the purpose and function of the password is slightly different. If in the first case you simply cannot get into the BIOS, then set password you will not be able to download to the HDD operating system. And this is the inability to use a computer or laptop for its intended purpose.

How to remove password from HDD

If we looked at three options to solve problems with the BIOS, then in order to remove the password from the hdd I have only one for you, the same bourgeois online service. I didn’t describe above how to use this site. To unlock a password you don't remember, you need to enter it incorrectly three times (for example, 1234 or whatever you want). After the attempts have been made, a code will appear in the window, enter it on the website http://bios-pw.org/ and in response you will receive a code to reset the password from hard drive.

How to put a password on your hard drive or BIOS

These passwords are set to protect data and from various manipulations. Every BIOS has this feature. Today's computers and laptops have a Security tab where you can set passwords. More details about this in the pictures.

Set Supervisor Password– set the Administrator password
Set User Password– set the User password
HDD Password– hard drive password
Password on boot Used to enable or disable the boot password.

Well that's it, my little article has come to an end. See you soon!

yeah the answer is off Lenovo "Aleksandr Goncharov:"

Added 3 minutes later:

I found an express programmer on Ali =)) with the ability to cure my problem at the hardware level, the problem is that it costs more than a new hard drive...

Added 11 minutes later:

Spoiler

Aleksandr Goncharov: Hello, my name is Aleksandr Goncharov. How can I help you?
Aleksandr Goncharov: Are you here?
. Gennady: Hello, I have a specific problem. After the kids played with my G700, the BIOS got corrupted. I removed the password through the service center by flashing the chip. There they told me that my hard drive was also corrupted. Empirically, I found out that the blocking level is High; I need a master password from st500lm000-1ej162. I already contacted the SeaGate company where they told me that the motherboard manufacturer could help me!!
Aleksandr Goncharov: We don't have such passwords.
Contact our service center maybe they can tell you something
https://www3.lenovo.com/ru/ru/services-cts/
. Gennady: I ​​won’t tell you...
. Gennady: t
. Gennady: I've already contacted them, everyone wants more money than the hard drive is worth...
Aleksandr Goncharov: Unfortunately we are just support, we do not have such information
. Gennady: I found a way, I found the software, but I need information that the laptop manufacturer knows, and so I communicate with the manufacturer’s representative and they tell me: “we don’t know anything” because this is not correct!!
. Gennady: ok where is this information??
. Gennady: for free
Aleksandr Goncharov: This information is available only to Lenovo engineers, this information is not available in public access, and we cannot provide it to you.
. Gennady: super!!! question why the hell!? There is generally a hard drive lock...
. Gennady: you can't, who can?
. Gennady: or how can I communicate with engineers?
Aleksandr Goncharov: There is no blocking, there is a white list of devices that can work with this motherboard
. Gennady: nooo, that’s not what you’re talking about now...
. Gennady: it's not about blocking with a TPM chip
. Gennady: we are talking about setting an ATA password on the hard drive
. Gennady: I'll go smoke for 5 minutes, otherwise this problem is really getting on my nerves
Aleksandr Goncharov: Unfortunately, I can’t help you, this password can only be set by the user, and we have no information on how to remove it
Aleksandr Goncharov: The master key may be available at the Lenovo factory, but it only applies to new devices, old devices are only recycled.
. Gennady: when installing any hard drive in any laptop, at the time of initialization (filling the MBR or GPT partition table) motherboard enters a master password into a specific cluster on the system “partition (beginning of the disk)” of the disk...
. Gennady: In the BIOS of any computer, you can set a user password so that this hard drive cannot be read without first unlocking it with a password. The only way to remove a user password is to enter the master password that was set by the motherboard. In this case, complete loss of data occurs.
. Gennady: You can’t even reflash the firmware of the hard drive itself without removing the lock!!
. Gennady: the second method is the PC3000 hardware and software complex, and only if the hard drive has a slot for it
. Gennady: everything
. Gennady: now I have information for you =))
Aleksandr Goncharov: I forwarded this question to our technical department, from there they immediately received an answer that we do not provide such information. We just don't have it
. Gennady: where is it and how can I contact them??
. Gennady: email, phone, form to fill out, just so I know that the request will go where it needs to go!!
. Gennady: *form
Aleksandr Goncharov: We don't have that opportunity. and I repeat once again, you will not be provided with this information since this is information only for internal use and is not publicly available
. Gennady: you didn't help me, if anything....
. Gennady: at least give false hope
. Gennady: If I cope with this problem myself, then in my eyes you will all become complete idiots and idiots....
. Gennady: You can’t do a technique without foolproofing!!

Another IT riddle about passwords on storage media.

We have a WD400 hard drive like this:

Playful hands (or evil fate? (-:)) set a password on it.
On numerous forums, smart people write that this (setting a password) sometimes happens with storage media from WesternDigitall due to a power outage or incorrect termination of programs such as PQmagic or Acronis.

So, there is a task to remove.

A little theory from the help to Victoria:

Manage security options. Passwords, password removal, temporary unlocking.
Theoretical introduction:

Modern hard drives have 2 types of passwords and 2 security levels. First, let's look at the types of passwords:

• User password: serves to restrict access to user information. When setting a User password, the hard drive rejects commands such as reading and writing. Consequently, information from a password-protected hard drive cannot be read, changed, or erased. This can only be done after removing the password or after temporarily unlocking it.
• Master password: NOT intended to protect information. Its purpose is to delete the User password in case of loss of the latter. The master password, once installed on the hard drive, will not affect its performance in any way.

• High: high level. The High level password can be deleted using the Master password while saving the information on the hard drive.
• Maximum: maximum level. If a User password of the Maximum level is set on the hard drive, then the Master password cannot be used to remove it (the screw will generate an error), and to remove the password you will have to use Security Erase. This is a special command that will ask you to transfer the Master password to the screw, after which it will erase all information from it, and only after that it will unlock it.

Is it possible to “find” a lost password using brute force? In the case of a hard drive, it’s almost impossible. According to the ATA standard, after FIVE unsuccessful attempts entering a password, the screw blocks the commands (in this case, the “Expired” status will appear in the passport). Re-entry is possible only after turning the power on and off. There is no limit on 5 attempts if you use erasure via the master password to remove the password. In this case, a natural obstacle to brute force will be the readiness pause (about 1 second) issued by the screw.

Practice setting and removing passwords.

There are keys for working with passwords And , as well as alternative console commands:

PWD: set disk password;

DISPWD: remove password from disk;

UNLOCK: temporarily unlock the screw (before turning off the power);

LOCK : Temporarily disable the password system (before turning off the power);

After entering the commands, a menu will appear on the screen with a choice of password options and privacy level. Navigate through the menu using the arrow keys (up and down), selecting the desired item using the ENTER key. Next you will be prompted to enter a password:

Enter password:_

After entering the password, press ENTER. If the screw does not generate an error, the password will be set immediately.

It should be borne in mind that master passwords for most hard drives are preset at the factory, and thanks to the Internet, they can be known to a wide range of people. Therefore, it is better to change the master password immediately. The set master password will not affect access to information in any way.
On the contrary, if someone locks the hard drive (for example, a malicious program-virus), knowing the master password you can unlock it.

To remove the user password using a known master password, you need to:

• By pressing F10, select the “master password” item in the menu;
• enter the master password (up to 32 characters). The Winchester will be unlocked.

Useful use of password erase option - quick removal all information (for example, before selling the HDD). In addition, security erasure, being by its nature a recording, has its own
ability to eliminate some types of surface defects and update SMART statistics. In order to perform a quick erase through the security system, you must:

• set any Maximum level user password to the screw;
• set any master password to the screw, for example 1234. Both passwords can be the same;
• By pressing F10, select a master password, then enter it and wait for the operation to complete.

Note:

1. If you have already called up the password entry line, but have changed your mind about entering it, press ESC.
2. To prevent forgetfulness, the program creates a small (32 byte) text file in the current directory in which the entered password is placed. The next time you enter the password, the program itself will read the contents of the file and slip it under the user’s nose :) This option can be easily disabled; how to do this, read the “Working with ini file” section.
3. If the tested drive stated in its passport that it does not support security options, a message will be displayed in the bottom line of the screen: “Attention: this HDD does not support working with passwords!” The inscription will not prevent you from _trying_ to set/remove the password to verify this practically.

After some poking around Google, it turned out that the standard master password for WD hard drives is 32 characters like this: " WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD".

At first nothing worked:

Then, apparently, a miracle happened and we saw the wonderful inscription “Done” after executing the password reset command:

And it seems like already HURRAY! ....but after the reboot the password appeared again and now it can’t be removed...

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

P.S. Acelab PC-3000 and A-FF REPAIR are not offered, since the use of these products is much more expensive than the cost of a hard drive.

Removing the password on the hard drive and Laptop BIOS is a fairly common problem that users often encounter. There are several methods (utilities) that can help you remove your password. On this moment Nowadays, many utilities are popular in solving this problem. To correct this situation, you need to follow certain rules.

You will need

Instructions

HDD_PW.EXE (18KB) to remove the password from the hard drive.

You will need

• -MHDD

Instructions

• Password system modern drives