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In reviewing portions of ATA/ATAPI-7 relating to SECURITY
ERASE UNIT, I have found that there may be a conflict in the information that
could lead to unexpected behavior as observed by the host. I'm bringing this up
here so that the collective knowledge of the original intent of SECURITY ERASE
UNIT can be used to determine if clarification or other is needed. If a host encounters a drive that has no password set and is
currently in the disabled / unfrozen state (state SEC1 from the security mode
state diagrams in figure 5, ATA/ATAPI-7 volume 1) the SECURITY ERASE UNIT (and
the requisite SECURITY ERASE PREPARE) command is allowed to be sent (Table 4).
However, in the text for SECURITY ERASE UNIT, clause 6.44.8 it states:
“If the password does not match the previous password saved by the
device, the device shall reject the command with command aborted.” What happens if no password has been set? Should the host
issue a password of all zeros? Does it matter what the host sends? Is it
expected that this should work? The behavior of when no password has been set
is unclear. |
