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Hard Drive Locked ?

Y

yoe

Junior Member
I have a big problem.
I have a PC with a 120GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8MB Cache hard drive.
it worked fine at first, but then, a few months ago, I started getting these weird hard disk read failures, after restarting. usually, another restart would fix it, and since I rarely restart my computer (it is usually on weeks at a time), I didn't give it another thought and figured something must be wrong with my motherboard or something..

until a few weeks ago, when my hard drive stopped responding all together.

I took out an old 40G drive from the closet and installed windows XP on it.
with it I tried to access my 120G drive. with no luck, windows refused to give it a drive letter, though I could see it in "Device manager" it was impossible to access the drive in any way. I got the same result in Linux. no mounting what so ever.

then I started using diagnostic tools and recovering software.. every recovering tool just said it could not access the drive, and when I ran Western digitals own diagnostic tool, it said it couldn't access the drive because it was LOCKED.

LOCKED ?

I immediately called western digital on the phone and spoke with technical support. Their response was that they are aware their drives can be locked, but offer no support on the subject, and also hinted to me that it may be the cause of a virus.

I also tried a tool called ATAPWD.EXE for locking / unlocking hard drives, but it also said it couldn't gain access to the drive.

Why am I going through all this effort?
I have about 60G of documents, programs, family pictures and other important files.

I refuse to believe this is a hardware problem, and more over, I refuse to pay some disk recovery lab hundreds of dollars for unlocking my drive.
I am certain, that with the right help, I can recover the files myself.

I require a solution that does not involve taking the hard drive apart or seeking professional help. nor do I need people telling me how stupid I am for not backing up.

I know how stupid I am.

in any case,
this is my conundrum. I will supply you with any system information you need.

thanks for your help.

Good day.

Yoav Erez.
 
The very first thing you have to do before people start knocking down your door offering help is to lose the attitude.
 
Sorry...don't have an idea...but if you don't get help here, come ask in the DC forum. The guys here are very friendly and helpfull, not like dkozloski here.

Originally posted by: dkozloski
The very first thing you have to do before people start knocking down your door offering help is to lose the attitude.
Click to expand...
Hey...you should lose ur attitude, yoe asked very politely, it's bs like this that drive people away from the forums.
 
I doubt it could somehow lock itself (It wasn't used in an XBOX was it? 😉). Did you do any sort of BIOS update? Could a recovery utility have done this to ensure that you use only it to restore your backups? (Blackmail! Extortion!)
 
I got irritated because instead of having an open mind he starts laying down rules how he will only accept suggestions for software fixes when it sure sounds to me like he ought to try swapping circuit boards from a working drive. The fact that the problems are long standing and come and go indicate hardware/electronic issues.
 
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