locked hard drive HELP??????

i got a 20 gig laptop hd that is locked. when i boot the pc it stops with hdd bay lock enter password from what i know is that it is asking for a master password .i dont know it cause i got the drive from my uncle who died ...ps it is not a bios password it is looking for..can anybody help me ????

 

cause i know the bios password i can get into the bios.

 

Seen this once before methinks, ended up formatting, problem solved. If I'm understanding what you're talkin about.

-Lion

 

It is a BIOS password, actually. With laptops you usually get a few passwords, e.g. one to turn the thing on, one to access the HDD/CD drive, one to use the network adaptor etc.

The password will be on the HDD itself, so you'll need to tell us the model name if you can find it. It is possible to wipe that sort of thing from a HDD using debug commands.

IceLion : if jdallas can't access the HDD, how is he supposed to format?

 

the hd is a hitachi model is DK23DA-20F...THANKS FOR THE HELP

 

Hmm, not looking good I'm afraid.
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/8BE962A9DC54FB3986256D480072C05A/$file/23da3.pdf

Do you have the master password?

If not I'll have a look at a way to erase the password... or at least set it to 20f (ASCII space). Hmmm....

 

Hmm.


You will need to do a security data erase. Try and find a utility from the manufacturer to do this for you, as I don't think standard formatting programs will give you the option.

I could go into how to blank out the master password, but I can't verify your intentions. I.e. for all I know you could have stolen the HDD and you're trying to get some private data off it. I'm not saying you are, but I'm saying I couldn't help you achive that.

 

the hd is mine and i dont care about what is on the hd i would like to do a full format so i can use it. any help you can give would be appreciated...

 

it is set to high security not max..

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2828.html

There you go.

I think that will let you format the HDD from a DOS boot floppy.

 

i tryed the program and this is what i get ....device is password protected and can not be tested code 0x22......

 

This is similar to what a friend of mine went through. He purchased a laptop from a convention and got it home to find that the hdd was locked. If I recall correctly, he used fdisk from a 98 boot disk and deleted the primary partition and installed a new OS. This was a while back, but I'm pretty sure that fixed the problem. I'd wait however til someone else either agrees with or finds another method than this... deleting the partitions can cause errors on the platters.

-Lion

 

I agree, FDISK is probably the way. First thing to do is FDISK /MBR. That will wipe out everything.

 

Yah MBR would be a really good idea to start with.

 

tryed fdisk from every bootdisk i could find but with the password lock it won't let me fdisk or format or access the drive when i boot from bootdisk it wont see the hd it says c: is a virtual drive.....

 

What kind of disk did u boot from?

FDISK does not care about passwords, I wonder if this drive is corrupt or damaged beyond repair.

Have u tried more than one computer?

 

Actually, if its a hardware password (which this seems to be) then not even FDISK can access the drive. You will need a utility made by the manufacturer to format the drive, and you will then need to FDISK or whatever to format it (the utility will leave it in RAW state)

I'll look for a Hitachi utility that will remove this.

 

Ok in the Hitachi fitness test utility, you need to go to tools, erase disk.

That should low level format the drive... taking you back to square one.

 

tryed the dft tool from hitachi and anything i do it says password locked.also tryed the hd in 5 computers. the hd works great other than the password lock.. cause i seen it working it has windows xp on it cause i installed it for my uncle before he pass a way..dont know how or why he put the password lock on it....

 

FDISK /MBR doesn't wipe out anything, persay.

It writes a new 9x master boot record.

 

nope ..but all the software i used in dos mode will see the drive

 

nope safe mode does nt help..but all the software i used in dos mode will see the drive

 

What Os are you using?

 

when i boot the pc all i get is a dos like screen that ask for hdd bay password that is far as i get it wont boot in to windows..

 

Well, that doesn't answer the question.

What OS is on the drive?

 

windows xp..

 

Here is what you can try.

If you have an XP CD, boot to it and go to the Recovery Console.
use mkdiskraw to nuke the drive.

Otherwise, debug it.

 

just tryed this and no luck..

 

Tried which?

 

XP CD, boot to it and go to the Recovery Console.
use mkdiskraw to nuke the drive

 

Try debugging the drive.

 

1 min. google came up with this.
Look Here:
http://www.pwcrack.com/bios.shtml
Pay special attention to bottom half of page.


& Look around here:
http://www.comcast.net/qry/websearc...earchChoice=google&safeBox=on&go.x=35&go.y=15

 

tried debugging the hd and it did not help...

 

it's not a bios password.

 

then try this:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

 

Asus, read the entire thread. Its not an OS password either.

 

Quick question... was this laptop used in a dock? You said hdd bay password... that's not something I've ever heard of before.

-Lion

 

LOL, I did, a couple of times.

Hey Jdallas on my firstpost/first link did you read this:

"HARD DISK LOCKS"


"Some laptops provide a utility to lock a hard disk with a password. These passwords are not the same as BIOS passwords. Moving a locked hard disk to another machine will not unlock it, since the hard disk password is stored in the hard disk firmware and moves with the hard disk. Also, adding a new (unlocked) hard disk to a locked machine may cause the new hard disk to become locked. Also, note that hard disk lock passwords cannot be removed by reformatting the disk, fdisk or any other software procedure. Usually, the BIOS password and hard disk lock passwords are the same and we can recover the BIOS password directly from the laptop security chip (after it is removed from the system board.) However, it is possible that the BIOS password and hard disk lock passwords may be different. In this case the BIOS password will not unlock the hard disk. You can test to determine if your hard disk is locked by attempting to access it in another laptop. "

 

yeah i read all this ..and also to the other post this laptop does not have a dock..

 

go in the bios...and enter a NEW ADMINISTRATOR password it CAN'T BE BLANK

if there is already an admin password, clear the cmos, reenter the bios and THEN set the admin pass...not user...needs to be admin

when an admin pass has been setup, there is a function called "enable hdd lock" or something like that, and just disable that function, after you can do wathever you want with it!!


hope that helps!!

 

didnt help...

 

if anybody can help let me know

 

hey guys just to let you know.....booted from 98 floppy and at the prompt i typed unlock hitachi .....and this is what i got ....locking operation failed....

 

still can't get this drive unlocked

 

This sounds similar to the Xbox hard drive locking. Microsoft locks their hard drives in the Xboxes so people can't use them outside of the console it came with. There are some programs that work to unlock the Xbox hard drive, but I don't think they would work in this case. You can look around www.xbox-scene.com and try though.

At the very least, you could take the hard drive out, put it into a different comp, boot up to a command prompt with a Win98 boot disk and run a program called ATAPWD - http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/~xbox/xbox-scene/tools/harddrive/atapwd.zip This will tell you if the hard drive was locked by the manufacturer. However, you still won't be able to unlock it without the 40-digit alphanumeric password. And it would theoretically take hundreds of years to crack the password since there would be 36^40 different combinations. (1.786 x 10^68)

 

buy a laptop HDD converter it is. something like 2.5 inch to 3.5 IDE I use the all the time. to slave laptops HDD on to the server. you can slave the drive delete the partition and reformat.

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/165

 

tried this with a HDD converter hooked to a desktop pc and after booting into windows xp the slave hd (laptop hd) did not show in my computer like the master hd but it did show in device manager but thats it...

 

Then why were you reccomending bios and OS password resets/hacks?

 

anybody got any new info for me about this hd problem??

 

Actually my first post to this thread has a link which besides info on Bios, contains info on Locked Hard Disk's.
I also posted one paragraph of such, a post or two down the page.
(maybe you should read the thread again too)
I posted the NT/password/registry editor cause I thought nothing to loose to try it, as it seems to hack right thru all of windows security measures.



Some Laptop HDD can store password in its firmware, sounds like the case here, and from what little I have researched, it may not be possible to recover it.
This info may be stored in a chip on the mobo too.
It is also possible that if another HDD is installed in this laptop, it too may get locked.
I'd hate to waste $100 to find out.


Anyway Good Luck to jdallas
Hope ya solve this one, If I find any additional info I post it.