Ghosted by an SSD

Jake0210 · October 25, 2020

I've been trying to unlock this ssd for the past 3 days, with no luck. It's a 256 GB samsung PM830, basically a samsung 830 series ssd. It was in a laptop that I got from my IT class, and I don't really have any history on it. The drive itself is still in pretty good condition, so ideally I would like to repurpose it.

First thing I noticed about the drive is that booting to it gives me a dell "Pre-Windows Login" screen with a password prompt. so it obviously isn't dead. The ssd came out of a dell laptop, so I guess that's where the dell part comes in. I've never seen or heard of this from dell before, so I have absolutely no experience with it. I've asked for a password from my professor, but he said he didn't know it.

Didn't really think much of it, so I just continued to install windows off a usb drive. When it came to format the drive, the entire thing showed up as unallocated in the windows installer. What's more concerning is that I couldn't write to the damn thing at all. The only thing I got was some obscure error saying that the operation couldn't be completed. I tried using diskpart to clean and format the drive, but that errored out too. So, screw windows for now. I created a live ubuntu usb and booted off that. Saw some linux wizards who suggested using hdparm to crack it open, so I had some hope there. First thing that put me off was that the hdparm -I command didn't result in a security section coming up. Usually you'll get some info about whether the drive is locked and frozen or whatever, but that entire section just didn't exist. Also, that was literally the only command that the drive would respond to. Attempting the "security unlock" command just returned a "bad/missing sense data" error, as did every other command I tried. It was basically just telling me to go f myself.

I also tried to format it with the ubuntu disks app, which is where I got some really weird results. At first, the entire drive just showed up as unallocated, but after I got an error about not being able to write to it, there was one partition that showed up. It was a 74 MB partition, with an unknown file system. The rest was "Free Space". Formatting the partition or trying to make a new one still errored out. I have the feeling that 74 MB partition is what's booted off of, even though it shows up as an unknown file system.

Ok, so now it's back to windows. I decided to install the drive in my main pc, where it showed up fine in the bios. I tried to use asus's secure erase utility there, but the drive apparently doesn't support it, which I doubt. Booting windows up is where things continued to get weird. The drive doesn't show up anywhere, except in crystal disk info, and intel's RST app, where it shows as locked. It doesn't show up anywhere else.

Even samsung's own utility doesn't detect it, which rules out their secure erase function as well. Also, PSID revert isn't supported, since that was introduced with the 840 series I believe.

Well, that's about all I tried. I really hope someone can shed some light on how I can unlock this thing, because without that pre windows login password, it's effectively a brick.

BTW, I'm not interested in the data on it at all. I just want to wipe it so I can use it with another project or something.

TL;DR: SSD locked with a password, and I can't figure out how to unlock it.

Parideboy · October 25, 2020

Have you tried the "override" argument in diskpart?

You'll need to select the disc:

list disc
select disk <disk number>

Do the same thing with the partition:

list partition
select partition <partition number>

And delete the partition:

delete partition override

Jake0210 · October 25, 2020

17 minutes ago, Parideboy said:
Have you tried the "override" argument in diskpart?

You'll need to select the disc:
list disc
select disk <disk number>
Do the same thing with the partition:
list partition
select partition <partition number>
And delete the partition:
delete partition override

I haven't, but the problem is that it doesn't show up there either. I think I might be able get around that by hot swapping the ssd in from one of my other hard drives. I'll give it a shot.

Edit: Hot swapped the ssd in from sleep, and it showed up. Also tried the override command, but there wasn't any partition to select. Attempting to create a partition fails as well.