Data recovery engineers always encounter the issue of password-protected HDD. It’s a relatively easy issue for those password-protected HDDs except Hitachi HDD. This is because that you need to only click one button to remove password for other HDDs. However, one-button is not available for encrypted Hitachi HDD.
In Hitachi HDD, the password works both on service area and data area, while it works only on data area in other HDDs. Therefore, once the HDD is encrypted, end-users can’t access either data or firmware. In that case, users need to switch HDD to be initialized from SA-C, which can be easily accomplished by editing firmware boot flag (”0401″) recorded in NVRAM. “0401″ means HDD is initialized from SA-A and “0400″ means HDD is initialized from SA-C.
Picture 1 Firmware Boot Flag
Firmware can be accessed when HDD is initialized from SA-C. Thus we can save password module (ICES or SECI or PSW) in SA-C to overwrite the one in SA-A. After that, users need to change firmware boot flag to “0401″. The HDD will work normally after power reset.
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