Hitachi HDD locked with password

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by dlb, Jan 25, 2008.

  1. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Due to the fact that this is a security issue, I don't want to look like I'm up to something shady, but is it possible to remove an unknown HD password? Or bypass it somehow? I know a lady whose laptop is now worthless due to a HD password. She said it worked fine Tuesday night, she shut it down, went to work Weds and Thursday, came home and turned it on Thursday night, and got the password prompt. Her son claims that he didn't do anything (yeah, right! We know how teenagers are ;) ). I seriously doubt that some type of glitch could set a HD password.....
    Any help or ideas will be greatly appreciated. (Besides buying a new hard drive).
     
  2. Novice

    Novice MajorGeek

    Would this be an IBM laptop? :)
     
  3. niospecv

    niospecv Private E-2

    Was there a solution to this?
     
  4. jblim1980

    jblim1980 Private First Class

    how about reformat , afterwards recover it using getdata back
     
  5. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    The owner of the laptop ended up buying a new hard drive. It was not an IBM laptop, but it was an IBM/Hitachi hard drive. The thing with HD passwords is that formatting the drive does not work, you can't format it. If you remove the drive and try to format it on a different PC, you'll get "access denied" errors, or will otherwise be locked out. Once the password is set, the ONLY way to get to the drive is in the original PC with the password that was set. I even used 2 or 3 boot CDs and set the BIOS to boot to the CD first, and still could not access or format the drive.
    :(

    (the son never did own up to it, but we all know he was responsible; he did admit to using the PC while mom was out)
     
  6. rjc862003

    rjc862003 Corporal

    he encrypted the harddrive I do the same thing with my critical data
     

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