This is an implementation in pure Python 3 of the hard disk password algorithm (previously described by Jethro Beekman, to whom all reverse-engineering credit is due) used by certain older Lenovo ThinkPad laptop computers.

Like the original, its purpose is to allow unlocking hard disks which were locked by such a ThinkPad on another computer.

It is released in the hope that it may be useful in environments in which Python 3 is present but Ruby is not, e.g. many (most?) recent Linux LiveCD/LiveUSBs.

The command-line options of this script are compatible with those of the original. It may therefore be used in an almost identical fashion:

More advanced usage is also possible, e.g.:

or e.g.:

See the help text below for more details.

Only if you're using it to read IDENTIFY DEVICE data from a drive.

There is none. You still need hdparm or the like to actually unlock the drive, and I haven't built in any special handling for nonstandard drive controllers or USB-to-SATA bridges at all.

Technically, no. You only need CAP_SYS_RAWIO capabilities on Linux or the equivalent on Windows, so you can grab a read/write handle to a disk's block device file.

Practically, yes.

One minor exception: on Linux, you can probably find cached copies of IDENTIFY DEVICE data for all currently connected ATA/SATA devices at /sys/class/ata_device/dev<x.y>/id, and if you can figure out what x.y is for the drive in question, you can feed the relevant path to this script as FILE without needing additional permissions.

There exists a 2007 port by Jussi Kivilinna of hdparm for Windows (apparently repackaged by a third party into an installer) that can read IDENTIFY DEVICE data from a drive and output it with --Istdout. While it doesn't support sending ATA SECURITY UNLOCK and SECURITY DISABLE PASSWORD commands to a drive, there exist other utilities that do, e.g. Victoria (download link at bottom), and someone may release an updated port in the future.

Some possibilities in descending order of anticipated likelihood:

I would, but I don't have one, I don't know anything about them, and if I'm being perfectly honest, I wrote this script as a coding exercise. Good luck!

thinkpad-password.py [-h] [-v] [-p PASSWORD] [--little] [--big] FILE
thinkpad-password.py [-h] [-v] [-p PASSWORD] SERIAL MODEL
thinkpad-password.py [--help]

Input arguments:
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        Do not prompt for password; use PASSWORD.

Output arguments:
  -h, --hex             Output password hash in hexadecimal form.
  -v, --verbose         Print additional information to standard error.

First usage form:
  FILE points to ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE data containing the drive's
  serial and model numbers. This may be one of the following:

    - A file containing IDENTIFY DEVICE data in raw or hexadecimal format.
      hdparm may be used with the --Istdout option to create this data.
      Linux may also cache this data at /sys/class/ata_device/dev<x.y>/id.

    - A Linux or Windows block device, e.g. /dev/sda, \\.\PhysicalDrive0.
      Root/administrator privileges are needed to send an IDENTIFY DEVICE
      command to the drive. For convenience, Linux-style names are allowed
      on Windows; /dev/sd[a-z] are interpreted as \\.\PhysicalDrive[0-25].

  --little, --machine   Force interpreting data as little-endian.
  --big, --reverse      Force interpreting data as big-endian.

Second usage form:
  SERIAL and MODEL are the drive's serial and model numbers.
  These are up to 20 and 40 characters long, respectively.
  Allowed characters range from ASCII 0x20 to 0x7E.

• https://github.com/jethrogb/lenovo-password
• https://jbeekman.nl/blog/2015/03/lenovo-thinkpad-hdd-password/

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.