Hard Drive password?

[mason]

Hello all

I was given a laptop (spares and repairs) it has a hard drive with it, Only 80gb but it would be handy as a spare if a customer wants a cheap hard drive. The only thing is when i plug it in to a laptop to test it or boot from it it comes up with hard drive password. The person who give it me doesnt know whos it is.

Is there a easy way to remove this with out the password?

i was thinking plug it in externally to my pc and use something that will totally zero fill the drive or will that not fix it?

all happy will be thanked

thanks
dave

 

[dbdawn]

This thread may be of some help? http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15151

 

[parker.casey]

@Mason: Was the problem solved?

 

[iisjman07]

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showpost.php?p=231610&postcount=6

 

[mason]

not yet just seen the reply's i will go over them now and see if i can fix it. Will keep you updated.

 

[mason]

them posts didnt work. i cant boot of anything because that password comes up before anything. even if it i tell it never to boot of hard drive. it still comes up with the hard drive password box

Enter Primary Master HDD user password [ ]

Will try and plug it in my pc as a second drive see if it comes up as a secondary drive and see if i can boot of disc and do it that way.

Will keep you up to date.

 

[iisjman07]

You have an ATA password on the drive; plugging it in to your machine won't do anything. Did you follow the advice in my post?

 

[NETWizz]

Here is what to do:

The problem is the drive is not only in a frozen state, where it couldn't possibly undergo a secure-erase even if it weren't password protected, but it also caused the BIOS to hang.

1. Remote the Drive temporarily.

2. Boot to DOS or Linux or whatever you use to load the tools to unlock the drive.

3. Connect the drive and wait 20 seconds.

4. Run the tool you are going to use, and it should see the drive... Unlock/Secure-Erase... and you are good to go.

 

[mason]

tried all of the above and still not fixed -

I ran HDD sentinal and it came up as 86% health with a possible 7 surface bad sectors and when i ran seatools it came up as 99% bad seconds in 1 second but i think that is due to the password - if its 86% health i wont bother trying any more on a faulty drive as it is.

Thanks for the help tho lads.

 

[iisjman07]

If you have a hard drive password then any attempts to read data from the drive will result in abort errors (you can see this using MHDD).