RND4000v1 X-RAID: HDD Master Password?

[DSMIW]

I need to initialise a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA (WD10EARX-00PASB0) hard drive in a Windows XP personal computer. The disk appears to be ATA locked with high security. It was previously running happily as one of four in a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (RND4000v1) configured to use Netgear's X-RAID technology. I am trying to set it up as a secondary internal disk in a Dell Dimension 9200 (DXP061) running Windows XP SP3 Build 2600 (below). SysInfo does not report any conflicts or errors.

The PC hangs if booted with this disk installed and powered up so I connect the power once Windows is running. Windows does not automatically recognise it, but if I let device manager struggle for 15mins it will eventually add a "Hard disk" device. Disk Manager then takes another 15mins before it will, sometimes, identify the WD drive needs initialisation, but cannot initialise it. Western Digial’s Lifeguard app has been of little use, but does at least allow me to include screen prints of the errors it reports (below).

I have tried to use WD Acronis True Image and Alignment tools within Windows but these either cannot see the disk or report it as unspecified and cannot do anything with it. I have successfully booted from CD directly to DOS and used various utilities to examine the disk. WD’s own Lifeguard CD image does not support this disk. None can fix it but one, “HDAT2”, reports the disk has having a security level “high” and the disk being locked. The master password is reported to be changed. HDAT2 does offer a function to unlock the disk, but I must have the current password to do so.

I am guessing that the RND4000 X-RAID has put a password on the disk. Any guidance as to how I can prove/disprove this and discover what it is?

Many thanks,

Mark

[mdgm]

You're sure it's a NV+ (v1) i.e. the NV+ chassis is silver and the NV+ runs RAIDiator 4.1.x or earlier?

Power down the NV+, remove all disks (label order), put disk you want to unlock in NAS, do a factory reset, then power down, remove disk, connect to PC and it should be unlocked. You can then put your disks back in the NV+ (same order as before) and the disk will be unlocked.

[ahpsi]

If the ReadyNAS did lock the drive and the method MDGM suggested doesn't work see this thread -> https://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=28803 for the password that may have been used. I find if I connect a locked drive to a PC that is running the Intel RST package (http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm) you can get a clear and concise view of the drive status and are even given an opportunity to enter the password and unlock. I have *not* successfully unlocked a drive using the password in the thread I referenced but I'm not certain the ReadyNAS locked it (too many hard drives).

[ahpsi]

Ha! In my case it was a ReadyNAS that locked the drive and using Intel RST and the password previously referenced does not unlock the drive. Using MDGM's method (factory defaulting with the locked hd as the only drive in the unit) *does* unlock it. Nice!

[DSMIW]

Greetings both,

mdgm, thanks for the guidance. My NV+ is definitely a V1. I will do as you suggest tomorrow. I cannot play with it as this morning to discover it reporting it had lost track of it's CNB ID and was using a temporary one. It would not respond to anything and the power button would not power it down; in the end I pulled the plug and it is now re-syncing; happily it seems.

I will get back to you shortly.

Mark

[DSMIW]

Greetings,

Well that was a success. The ReadyNAS came back happily with the original disks correctly replaced and the locked disk is now unlocked and being formatted by Windows XP. Many thanks mdgm!