How do I unlock a locked 2.5" HDD? I have the PW...

[GoStumpy]

-edit-

DRIVE HAS BEEN RECYCLED AND IS OUT OF MY LIFE FOREVER, HURRAY!

I cannot find a single thread/page on this through google that is not dealing with people that don't have the password and are trying to unlock a HDD...

I have the damn password, but the drive is not in the original laptop that it came out of... That is long gone...

I don't even want the information off it...

Basically a friend received a laptop, it had this password on the HDD, and he asked if we can just put a new HDD in it... I said of course, sold him my spare 250GB 2.5" HDD, all was good...

He gave me the HDD that was in it in case I could ever get it unlocked...

Well I found a USB stick in the laptop bag, and sure enough it has the old owners resume on it!

Emailed him and he gave me the password for the HDD.

Now I can't figure out how to unlock it? I never get given the option to enter a password no matter what I do...

I tried the www.hddunlock.com program, and it doesn't detect any HDD's.

I downloaded a WD HDD Diagnostic software, and it sees the HDD, but again, no option to unlock...

Help!

What can I do?

 

[fluffmonster]

get a linux liveboot distro, put it on a usb stick, boot into it with no other drive connected to the machine other than the one you want to unlock.

use hdparm to unlock the drive from the command line. if you google "hdparm secure erase" you should get the necessary help.

as far as I can tell, no drive unlocking in windows ever happens the way you want it to.

 

[Modelworks]

The program you need to use is called MHDD. MHDD does not work well with USB drives so you will need to attach the drive to a SATA or IDE port directly.
http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

 

[corkyg]

" ...have the damn password, but the drive is not in the original laptop that it came out of... That is long gone..."

That is probably the problem. Many laptops that impose security passwords also lock the HDD. They are then linked together. It may be possible to do a low level format and restore the drive to "cherry" condition.

 

[GoStumpy]

MHDD is not working, Any PW unlock is just a quick "FAIL"....

Ugh!

 

[GoStumpy]

Trying the 'hdparm' in a Ubuntu liveCD, and I am getting close but it's not working!

Error I get:

Issuing SECURITY_UNLOCK command, password="ruccio", user=master
SECURITY_UNLOCK: Input/output error

Thats it....

I'm confused!

Internet has told me something about the password has to be in ASCII 32 bytes or something? That confused me as well..

Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded with NULs to reach 32 bytes

How do I do that? What does that even mean?

HELP!

Thanks!