topic Re: Help with unlocking drives in EF & E-Series, SANtricity, and Related Plug-ins

Help with unlocking drives

Chrisma — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 09:39:40 GMT

I recently acquired Toshiba PX05SRQ384B drives from a reseller, which were previously used in a NetApp appliance. These drives are FIPS encrypted, and I have encountered difficulties in unlocking and formatting them for reuse.

I have attempted to format and unlock the drives using both a Synology system and a TrueNAS system, without success. I also tried the manufacturer reset functionality, but this did not resolve the issue.

Given the circumstances, I kindly request anyone who has a lab for me to send the drives over and use NetApp’s SANtricity Storage Manager software to unlock and reuse these drives. I understand the importance of adhering to security protocols and am seeking guidance on the most feasible way to get these drives operational.

I have invested nearly $20,000 in acquiring these drives and am eager to integrate them into my storage infrastructure. Your support in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Please let me know if this is possible and any steps I need to take to proceed.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Re: Help with unlocking drives

SpindleNinja — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 21:53:58 GMT

If they are locked you pretty much need everything (system, key manager, etc). but you'd also need the key/pw to unlock these drives.

Typically people do buy the ONTAP shelves with cheap 2 or 4TB drives for non-Netapp use cases. This is the first I've seen someone trying FIPS with former E-Series drives. I would try asking over at /r/homelab on reddit to see if anyone has tried to do this.

Re: Help with unlocking drives

AlexDawson — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:48:00 GMT

You should be able to use the PSID printed on the drives to unlock them - try to follow the instructions at https://serverfault.com/questions/712849/how-to-unlock-an-ssd-disk-with-hdparm

Re: Help with unlocking drives

AlonsoD — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:16:44 GMT

Hello Chrisma; from what I've been told, you should be able to secure erase an SED or FIPS drive without the encryption key, but it would require the E-Series array. With FIPS you would need the drive security ID (the up-to-32 character alphanumeric string) that is on the label of the drive and use the "set drive" command, see https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/e-series-cli/commands-a-z/set-drive-securityid.html.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to get your drives into a NetApp facility to have them perform the reset. If the seller still has their E-Series array perhaps you could ship back the drives and have them use the method above to erase/reset the drives for you.