Additionally, hdparm versions prior to 9.31 do not pass-through the long command time-outs required for the erase commands to the SCSI-ATA Command Translation ("SAT") layer which such devices use. Such devices may still be unlocked by connecting them directly to a different SATA interface. They may also decide that locked devices are faulty, and hence not provide any access to them in order to issue unlock commands. Whilst drives directly attached to a straight-forward SATA controller should work reliably, some "intelligent" interfaces such as USB or firewire to PATA/SATA bridges, SAS controllers or hardware RAID controllers may try to reset devices which they have decided are no longer responding.
When a Secure Erase is issued against a SSD drive all its cells will be marked as empty, restoring it to factory default write performance.ĭISCLAIMER: This will erase all your data, and will not be recoverable by even data recovery services.ĭISCLAIMER: If you hit kernel or firmware bugs (which are plenty with not widely-tested features such as ATA Secure Erase) this procedure might render the drive unusable or crash the computer it's running on.ĭISCLAIMER: The security-erase command is a single command which typically takes minutes or hours to complete, whereas most ATA commands take milliseconds, or seconds to complete.
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This procedure describes how to use the hdparm command to issue a Secure Erase ATA instruction to a target storage device.