Unlocking a PW protected HD?

[Privdog]

Well i tried all weekend to do this myself with not much luck. Anyway, i took apart my UltimateTV and yanked the HD out of it. its a 45GB WesterDigital(WD450AW) Preformer. I was able to write 0's to the drive thus erasing it fully, but it wont let me fdisk it or anything of that nature because of the security on the drive. i'm guessing the security for it is not on the platter itself but on a chip inside the drive. anyway, what im wondering is there anyway to unlock this drive without having the password? or should i use some kind of jedi mind trick on it? anyone have any expierience or information on this subject?

 

[SwampsterFL]

You say you can write to the drive, in that you were able to do a clean wipe, but it will not FDISK?

Have you tried REFORMAT? As long as you are satisfied with the partition(s) as they exist, that should do it.

BTW . . . you didn't mention why you are doing this. That might help in a further diagnosis.

Swampster

 

[Privdog]

Originally posted by: SwampsterFL
You say you can write to the drive, in that you were able to do a clean wipe, but it will not FDISK?

Have you tried REFORMAT? As long as you are satisfied with the partition(s) as they exist, that should do it.

BTW . . . you didn't mention why you are doing this. That might help in a further diagnosis.

Swampster

can write zeros to the drive yes. but thats it. the ATA security is enabled. to get it to do anything other than erase(ie. write a partition table) it will not because of the security. as for why i'm doing it, just to do it i guess. something i haven't done before. and a friend of mine had an extra UltimateTV box laying around he gave me. if i don't get it to work i'm just going to put it back together and sell it and buy a new drive. just thought i would try it.