Dell business notebook ate my hdd password!

Hi!

Strangest thing happened... I had a Dell E6420, on which I put a ssd. I set a password - the same - on both the notebook and the hdd. I eventually sold the nb with the original drive, so I removed both passwords and kept my trusty old ssd. I did a cold reboot with the de-password-ed ssd inside to check no password is requested and, sure enough, none was asked of me.

Later on I tried to use the ssd and, to my amazement, I discovered that all notebooks I tried it on - Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo - requested a password. And, when the password was introduced, they refused to acknowledge it. My Dell Alienware neither prompted me for a p/w, nor booted.

Now, I am pretty sure that
- I removed the hdd password (I cold-booted at least once afterwards);
- I know the hdd password (I used it many times and did not change it, except to remove it).

So what could be the cause of this? I have 2 theories:
- the password contained one capital letter, which the E6420 recognized as such, but which many older bioses do not (my Lenovo accepts the p/w with or without a capital); maybe this screwed things up...
- when I first set the ssd password, the Dell bios asked me if I wanted to enable some feature that would permit me to erase the drive only on Dell PCs (or something like that); I said no (I am pretty sure), but maybe it was enabled nonetheless...

 

Is the SSD OEM, or did you install it yourself? Also, what brand is the SSD?

There have been some problems reported with SandForce SSD controllers and BIOS passwords, usually requiring warranty replacement of the SSD...

 

it's a Kingston V (gen. 2, Toshiba-based)

 

Not sure if that used SandForce or not, but now that you don't have the E6420, I think you are left with a non-functional SSD. Maybe you can use another Latitude to reset the password (add one, then remove it)?

 

I can't find the thread or post right now, but I swear someone else recently had a very similar problem with a very similar SSD. I do not think any Kingston drives use SF (not sure on that, though), but it may be an issue similar to the SF issue.

 

Yep, that's probably the solution. I'll try to get hold of a Latitude. But how new does it have to be? Will an e4300 work, for instance?

 

Hi landsome,

Your post confirms that there is a serious issue with Kingston SSD drives and SATA password. Please refer to my post here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/643249-best-ssd-hdd-e5400-2.html#post8295106

I have sent my locked SSD drive to the seller for warranty claim, because it is SSD issue (to be more precise it seems this is a bug in Sandforce SF-2281 firmware).

Just a few minutes ago I have found very interesting issue description on other forum:
HDD password on Wildfire not recognised on reboot - drive now locked

The issue described there was related to OCZ and Patriot Memory SSD drives (with the same Sandforce SF-2281 controller) installed in Dell and HP notebook. From unknown reason, SATA password on some SSD drives is truncated to 8 characters and original password set by user if longer then 8 characters is no longer valid.

How long is your password? Is it longer then 8 characters?

If yes, please try to type only first 8 characters of your password.

Best regards,
Adam

 

Thanks for the pointers, Adam. But
- my Kingston SSD is based on a Toshiba controller, not SF
- my p/w was 4-letter long (one capital, two numbers)

 

Kingston’s HyperX SSD uses SandForce SF-2281 controller:
http://media.kingston.com/support/downloads/MKD_179_1_HyperX_SSD.pdf

Maybe some SSDNow SSD drives (not HyperX product line) uses different controller, but I'm not sure.

Best regards,
Adam

 

PBA UI was changed since the E6X10 series, but it won't hurt to try it in an E4300. If it doesn't work, try to find an E4310 or E6410 to try it in.