Power Management; Self-Monitoring, Analysis, And Reporting Technology (S.m.a.r.t.); Security Mode; 3.16.1 Master And User Passwords - Western Digital WD15NPVX Technical Reference Manual

Product Features
3.14

Power Management

The drives support the ATA power management commands that lower the average power consumption
of the hard drives. For example, to take advantage of the lower power consumption modes of the drive,
an energy efficient host system could implement a power management scheme that issues a Standby
Immediate command when a host resident disk inactivity timer expires. The Standby Immediate
command causes the drive to spin down and enter a low-power mode. Subsequent disk access
commands would cause the drive to spin up and execute the new command.
To avoid excessive wear on the drive due to the starting and stopping of the HDA, set the host's disk
inactivity timer to no shorter than ten minutes.
The drives also support the SATA power management feature that lowers the average power
consumption of the SATA interface.
3.15

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.)

S.M.A.R.T. helps you monitor a drive's internal status through diagnostic commands at the host level.
The drive monitors Read Error Rate, Start/Stop Count, Re-allocated Sector Count, Seek Error Rate,
Power-on Hours Count, Spin-up Retry Count, Drive Calibration Retry Count, Drive Power Cycle
Count, Offline Scan Uncorrectable Sector Count, Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate, Multi-zone Error Rate,
Spin-up Time, Relocation Event Count, and Current Pending Sector Count. The hard drive updates
and stores these attributes in the reserved area of the disk. The drive also stores a set of attribute
thresholds that correspond to the calculated attribute values. Each attribute threshold indicates the
point at which its corresponding attribute value achieves a negative reliability status.
3.16

Security Mode

The Security Mode feature set allows the user to create a device lock password that prevents
unauthorized hard drive access even if the drive is removed from the computer.

3.16.1 Master and User Passwords

The manufacturer/dealer can set a master password using the Security Set Password command, without
enabling the device lock function. The user password should be given or changed by a system user.
Master Password Identifier is supported and set to a default value of 00FE. If a Master Password is set
via a Security Set Password Command, a valid Master Password Revision code value of 0001h – 00FEh
must be used. A Master Password Identifier of 0000h is ignored.
When the master password is set, the drive does not enable the device lock function. When the user
password is set, the drive enables the device lock function, and the drive is locked after the next power
on reset or hard reset.

3.16.2 Security Levels

High - If High level security is set and the user password is forgotten, the master password can be used
to unlock the drive and access the data.
Maximum - If Maximum level security is set and the user password is forgotten, data access is
impossible. Only the master password with a Security Erase Unit command can unlock the drive when
the device lock function is enabled and the user password has been forgotten. When the Security Erase
Unit command is used to unlock the drive, all user data is erased.
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