Brand New Drives Security Locked - Unusable

[general_neo]

I recently purchased Multiple 8TB and 10 TB drives for a friend. And he claims that the drives are unusable. Upon checking remotely I found that all the drives are password locked (Security locked).

Since these are brand new drives, we just want to format and start using them.

How to remove the security lock on the drives? Losing data is not a problem because the drive was never used. Also please suggest a reason why this might have happened. We are talking about 9 drives.

[Neha_07]

Hi @general_neo,

As per the details shared, we would like to inform you that the WD dashboard did not ask for the password in order to erase the drive.

This is related to the bios password security, please check your security settings.

[general_neo]

we tried this on different machines and the BIOS password was never set. Let’s say for the reason unknown that some password became enabled. How to remove it, if it’s not set up from PC BIOS. All the drives were purchased from NEWEGG as brand new and we are unable to use them. Is there any way to remove this password and use it as a fresh drive. There is no data or information on the disk as it was never used.

[general_neo]

A long story short; I brought this for a friend who couldn’t buy these HDDs due to the country he is located in. I tested a couple of drives on my machine and it was working fine. I purchased over 8HDDs from different vendors on Newegg. All of them came factory sealed in the original packaging and I inspected them before sending them to my friend. A few days after receiving the HDDs he shares this info that almost all except 1 HDD is having the Lock. I am assuming that he used some kind of connection that cause this to happen. I have no proof or logic to explain that conclusion. I just would like to know if there is any way this can be removed. I was seeing complaints from some customers that the password appeared when they try to use the HDD externally on a faulty SATA connector. I am assuming the worst and looking for a fix. There should be some way to reset the HDD and make it work normally. As mentioned data isn’t important as there is no data on it.

[general_neo]

Let’s say, I got scammed. It doesn’t make any sense to send an HDD with password-locked unless it was stolen HDDs. And Even if it’s so, how does the lock be removed? By formatting? The only thing I am concerned about being a middle man, I didn’t think of checking each HDD. I just checked the first few and they all seemed to be fine. I checked using crystal disk mark and didn’t go on to create a partition. I was listening to clicking sounds to see if the HDD got damaged in transportation. I feel so disappointed in helping someone only to make the situation more difficult. If there are any means to remove these locks, please do let me know. Thank you

[fzabkar]

Can you upload a CrystalDiskInfo SMART report for each drive?

I see that these drives are Purple surveillance models. Some DVR applications will apply their own security locks on these drives.