I changed my HD password this morning and can't remember it

[BirdDad]

I tried shorting the cmos

 

[corkyg]

You mean you are using a 2.5" laptop drive in your desktop? Shorting the CMOS has no real effect on HDDs - that is just for the BIOS password. Do you mean a Windows drive password?

 

[robisbell]

or they are using a laptop.

OP, what password are you needing exactly?

 

[BirdDad]

no it is a laptop
I wish I knew witch pins to short

 

[robisbell]

what pins did you short?

 

[corkyg]

You can't do that on a laptop! They are designed deliberately that way to foil the average airport laptop snatcher.

You are mixing apples and oranges - the HDD on a laptop is not password protected or locked by the BIOS. You can remove it and put it in a desktop or an external USB drive and reformat it.

If you have entered a laptop BIOS pasword, it is not on the HDD - it is in CMOS and usually has to be OEM reset. What make is it?

 

[robisbell]

umm, yes you can clear a cmos that way, on some laptops. I'm wondering what he shorted tho, just incase it was something else.
"Under the keyboard or bottom of laptop - If you are working on a laptop computer the location of the dipswitch (almost never a jumper) can be under the keyboard or on the bottom of the laptop in a compartment such as the memory compartment."
I'm not forgetting the other issue, but need to know what he shorted and where it was on the laptop.

 

[BirdDad]

It IS on the hard drive.
I took out the battery and shorted the batteries terminals that did clear the cmos

 

[robisbell]

can you explain where it is asking for a password exactly?
what it says exactly can help too.

 

[mechBgon]

It sounds like he has one of the Seagate drives which feature onboard, on-the-fly encryption. The drive's own password is set via the BIOS, but is stored on the drive, so blanking the CMOS will not help.

If he cannot remember the password for the HDD's encryption, it'll make a nice paperweight.

 

[robisbell]

http://www.seagateunlock.com/

 

[corkyg]

Lesson Learned . . . Never use a password on your laptop unless you know it for sure or write it down.

BTW - what brand of laptop allows such stuff?

 

[robisbell]

it's seagate hard drives, not the laptop.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Lesson Learned . . . Never use a password on your laptop unless you know it for sure or write it down.

Where I used to work, we had lappies which had tons of sensitive info on them, and were carried by our on-call staff after hours every day. Having one lost/stolen would've been a nightmare without some serious safeguards. It definitely eased my mind when we got one with full-disk encryption, although I still used EFS and other hardening strategies on top of that.

Some time later, I got a call from the guy who took my job after I left. Seems he didn't read my documentation carefully :evil: I hope they managed to un-brick it eventually.

 

[BirdDad]

it does not have on disk encryption
It is asking me the password at boot up

 

[mrblotto]

IBM/Lenovo laptops have an option to set the HD pwd in the BIOS. Forgotten HD pwd=useless piece of metal..............

 

[robisbell]

okay, which laptop is this?

 

[BirdDad]

it's a gateway nx860NL

 

[corkyg]

And is it a home machine or an office machine with multiple user access? If it is a home machine, and you are the sole user, there really is no good reason to use a password at all. As MrBlotto said, "Forgotten HD pwd=useless piece of metal.............. "

 

[robisbell]

not really there's ways to get a HDD password. I posted a utility to retrieve them.

 

[mrblotto]

for real? *Thinks about calling shenanigans*

 

[BirdDad]

yeah but the utility destroys the data
I have some data on this drive I would like to retrive
also the frimware reset -my drive is not listed

 

[robisbell]

did you contact Seagate and see if they can assist you?

 

[BirdDad]

I contacted Seagate and they said I was SOL

 

[corkyg]

Looks like a stone wall - but there are possibilities:

PW

Seagate drives are not listed - so you may be SOL. You can salvage the drive by reformatting it.