Cirbirus said:

Pulp_Fiction said:

In a nutshell you need to use the "config" command in MHDD and disable the security features. Just disabling the lock does not deactive the ability to lock the drive.

I guess I will write a tutorial on the whole procedure used and get it stickied. I figure we have gotten far enough on this where a summary is in order.

Pulp

Oh, damn! I wish I'd had that info when I was trying to unlock the drive. Well, now I know. I've been trying to find the master password so we can unlock them ourselves without having to pay the $50 but I've had no luck so far.

The info is here, just spread around. Thus I will work on the summary doc.

Good luck with the master password finding. One of the things that can be done is to put an unopened drive and read a specific sector. This will tell us if the drives master password has ever been changed. If somebody wants to volunteer to do this with an unopened drive I will take the time to look up this info again.

I contacted them while working on mine and they told me the password for the toshiba and the hitachi drives was not saved in their logs during the unlock procedure. This led me to believe they were overwriting it and not "cracking" it. They told me some of the other brands will end up with a password in their logs when finished and they could give it to me. I plan to Z1 lock one of these drive brands and have them unlock it for me with my last "credit". I bought a 3 pack.

Ok, I bought a new hard drive so I can start having some fun.

I don't think they are setting the master password otherwise the AFF Repair Station software wouldn't be able to unlock the drive so fast.

Now that I have a backup drive I can reset the password on the drive myself. I'll lose all the data but that's ok. I'll test the other drive first of course ;). I guess I could do it regardless but I didn't want to risk it when I didn't have a backup drive.

Cirbirus said:

Ok, I bought a new hard drive so I can start having some fun.

I don't think they are setting the master password otherwise the AFF Repair Station software wouldn't be able to unlock the drive so fast.

Now that I have a backup drive I can reset the password on the drive myself. I'll lose all the data but that's ok. I'll test the other drive first of course ;). I guess I could do it regardless but I didn't want to risk it when I didn't have a backup drive.

Here is a test if you would like to try it.

This will only tell us if the Z1 resets the master and user passwords or just the User. IF the default master password was still intact as you are guessing then this should be a no risk. Otherwise, drive locked!!

Get a drive you don't care about that supports drive locking.
Use MHDD to set the master password to something easy like "aaaaaa"
Test that the password was set in MHDD
Make sure the user password is not set.
Insert the drive in your Z1.
Let it boot up for at least 20 seconds. You should see a message saying it cannot use the drive.
Take the drive out and put it back in your PC
See if it is locked
If it is then boot with MHDD and try to use the master password to unlock it.

If it works then the Z1 doesn't change the master password but there is still the possibility Pioneer sets it to something other than default or the drive unlock service has found a weakness in the ATA lock standard they are exploiting to unlock these and clear the passwords. I'm 50/50 on the fence about which way this is. Either seem very possible to me.

I just talked to a friend of mine and he has a stack of 4-5 gig laptop drives which he doesn't care if they get locked and never unlocked and I'll stop by tonight (I hope) and see if I can grab one or 2 and try that out. Unless someone else tries this before I get home.

Hmmmmm, Curiouser and curiouser. I am unable to lock that Seagate hard drive...

But MHDD's "EID" command says Security is :high, OFF

I wonder if this means this drive is unlockable. Which would make it perfect. What did your drive say when you disabled it Pulp?

Cirbirus said:

Great. The drive I just bought doesn't support the "config" command. What a day...

Oh, and so no one else wastes there time with this drive, it's a Seagate ST96812A 60GB drive I bought at Best Buy. I figured I go with them so I could take it back if it "got messed up" somehow.

That's the first of the "new" drives I've heard of that didn't support it. That sucks.

I put an old drive in (8 gig) and got the same message.

EID in MHDD responded with Security high, OFF

I don't see a clear way to find out if the drive supports config. I have been lucky so far as all the drives I tried have.

Edit: I found the specs on the drive you bought and it is ATA-6. This is dissapointing as I was hoping the newer standards were what was needed.

ducatiboy said:

I just talked to a friend of mine and he has a stack of 4-5 gig laptop drives which he doesn't care if they get locked and never unlocked and I'll stop by tonight (I hope) and see if I can grab one or 2 and try that out. Unless someone else tries this before I get home.

Give it a shot but the 8 gig I just tried didn't support config.

Turns out it was't the drive that didn't support it, it was the computer.

I was using a fairly new HQ/Compaq and it just wouldn't let me do it. Might have been a security setting in the BIOS.

I was able to use the config command on one of my computers at home and now I can't use the PWD command to set a password. It actually tells me, "This drive does not support security features." or something like that.

Cirbirus said:

Turns out it was't the drive that didn't support it, it was the computer.

I was using a fairly new HQ/Compaq and it just wouldn't let me do it. Might have been a security setting in the BIOS.

I was able to use the config command on one of my computers at home and now I can't use the PWD command to set a password. It actually tells me, "This drive does not support security features." or something like that.

Hmm, my older 8 gig drive was a Seagate. I just tried a Toshiba MK2018GAP, this has ATA-5 support and it does have the config ability.

It may be your PC or it may be a brand issue. Lets collect data on what does and doesn't work and it will be part of the HDD FAQ I'm creating.

Yeah, it was the PC that wasn't letting me do it. The clue is that it said "Security: high, OFF" when I did "EID" in MHDD. On a really old drive I was playing with it didn't say anything at all about security.

Cirbirus said:

Yeah, it was the PC that wasn't letting me do it. The clue is that it said "Security: high, OFF" when I did "EID" in MHDD. On a really old drive I was playing with it didn't say anything at all about security.

I got the exact same message on the older drive that supported locking but not config.

The drive I'm playing with now may provide us with some alternatives. (I'm trying my test above)

OK, I've got the new 60GB drive set up with larger partitions and the Z1 didn't lock it so I'm good to go. I did have the Z1 reboot when I was setting the time, don't know if that means anything.

To set up the drive I used Ultimate Boot CDwhich has Free FDisk on it. I formatted the drive using Windows XP and formatted it as FAT32 partitions

I'm going to start working on the audio files now, hope to have something that will at least play on the Z1 soon. Then I'll be able to start messing with the database structure so I can recreate the playlists.

Cirbirus said:

OK, I've got the new 60GB drive set up with larger partitions and the Z1 didn't lock it so I'm good to go. I did have the Z1 reboot when I was setting the time, don't know if that means anything.

To set up the drive I used Ultimate Boot CDwhich has Free FDisk on it. I formatted the drive using Windows XP and formatted it as FAT32 partitions

I'm going to start working on the audio files now, hope to have something that will at least play on the Z1 soon. Then I'll be able to start messing with the database structure so I can recreate the playlists.

Sounds good except for the reboot. I have never seen that. If it is working fine then cool.

GL with audio. I will be trying to insert a lockable disc with a master password set tonight and see what happens to it. I'm hoping for no paperweights when done. LOL I won't pay to unlock this one!

Hard Drive sacrificed.

The Z1 sets both the User and Master passwords.

Test performed was this.

Master password set on drive.
User password left blank
Drive inserted into Z1
Z1 booted
Drive removed from Z1
Drive returned to PC
Master password set in step 1 no longer valid to unlock drive

Anybody want an 8 gig laptop drive cheap?

Well, the 60GB drive is constantly crashing. There are too many variables to be able to tell why.

I'm currently reconfiguring it with smaller partitions but I don't see how that could make a difference. I'm guessing it's more likely a bad copy.

Pulp, when you get a chance can you go into FDISK and tell me the exact partition sizes you have set for each partition?

Damn I should have made a drive image instead of just a file copy.

Pulp_Fiction said:

Anybody want an 8 gig laptop drive cheap?

Aren't there unlock tools which will kill the data for free? I thought I saw a few but the data isn't safe.

Cirbirus said:

Well, the 60GB drive is constantly crashing. There are too many variables to be able to tell why.

I'm currently reconfiguring it with smaller partitions but I don't see how that could make a difference. I'm guessing it's more likely a bad copy.

Pulp, when you get a chance can you go into FDISK and tell me the exact partition sizes you have set for each partition?

Damn I should have made a drive image instead of just a file copy.

I didn't create the partitions in FDisk, I used the management console in Windows XP. I also didn't use the original size partions on any of them.

From the management console I assigned the partitions as:

LDATA 20000
SDATA 2000
MSV 30000
USER 2000

I was wondering if a file copy would work.....

ducatiboy said:

Pulp_Fiction said:

Anybody want an 8 gig laptop drive cheap?

Aren't there unlock tools which will kill the data for free? I thought I saw a few but the data isn't safe.

Oh, yeah, forgot about that one. Perhaps I will try it tomorrow.

Thx,
Pulp

Pulp_Fiction said:

I didn't create the partitions in FDisk, I used the management console in Windows XP. I also didn't use the original size partions on any of them.

Hmmm, that is interesting. I wonder if I have a bad copy or if the FDISK I used didn't do it correctly (or more likely I didn't do it right).

The original drive still works fine so I'm going to do a drive image and work with that. Plus I'll need to do a full, real format instead of quick formats. Quick formatting doesn't look for bad sectors so that could also be my problem. That's what I meant by too many variables to really know what's wrong with what I did.

I wonder if we have to use FAT32. The system is Windows, it should be able to read NTFS... famous last words.

Cirbirus said:

I wonder if we have to use FAT32. The system is Windows, it should be able to read NTFS... famous last words.

Yah, but different kinds of windows have different levels of NTFS compatibility. Remember 95/98/ME had none. Only NT/2000/XP can read NTFS. I would guess windows mobile might not have the code packed in there to read NTFS.

But please try, that's a good experiment.

Free drive unlocking service did not support the Hitachi drive I locked. Oh well. I did however find another service that could be useful.

http://www.hdd.profesjonalnie.pl/faq.php

Does anyone have access to...or know someone...or some service center, etc that would have access to a factory tech manual for this unit? I think that would be invaluable assistance and indeed may explain a lot of things we are guessing at.

03Aviator said:

Does anyone have access to...or know someone...or some service center, etc that would have access to a factory tech manual for this unit? I think that would be invaluable assistance and indeed may explain a lot of things we are guessing at.

I decided to take mine apart tonight. Any specific questions? New thread coming.

I took my nav drive out. Unlocked the drive and made a ghost image from one to the other resizing the partitions with ghost. Put the new drive back in my nav system and it did not work. I turn on the car and the nav fans kick on but the screen stays down and never folds up. I tried to take out the drive and boot with no drive at all and it did the same thing.

I'm going to make a few more images of my original drive before I give up too much and put the original drive back in. I'm afraid to disable security with MHDD for feer I might mess something up.

Any thoughts?

My replacement drive is a Hitachi Travelstar out of a IBM T40, 40 gig, and I disabled locking, I know this cause it was in the unit and came back out and still unlocked. And when MHDD tried to lock it with PWD it said it couldn't cause the drive didn't support this.

Weird all I get is just fan noise on the Nav when I boot it up.