Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of dsy3570
dsy3570

asked on

how to reset hardrive password on hitachi notebook hd 9.5mm 10gb 2.5".

how to reset hardrive password on hitachi notebook hd 9.5mm 10gb 2.5".  cant do anything after bios set up.  not even formating with xp pro cd boot?  called hitachi they said its against their policy to reset a hard drive password so i need outside help
Avatar of rid
rid
Flag of Sierra Leone image

There is a very long and interesting thread here somewhere about HD passwords. I think that the final word is that you can forget the HD if you forget the password. You can't do anything without the pw. I guess this is not what you want to hear, but I'm fairly convinced this is what you'll have to live with.
/RID
Avatar of ChrisSchumann
ChrisSchumann

The easiest way to deal with this is to buy a broken drive of the same model and swap the electronics.

The hard way is to replace the password chip on the drive, and it's nigh impossible to find out which one that is.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of rid
rid
Flag of Sierra Leone image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
What is the drive model. DK23xx or IC25N...
If your HDD is from DK23 series, and manufacturer password was not modified, then it is possible to unlock HDD using atapwd.exe supplied by Seagate.
Maybe not dead-on but related:::

The Hard Drive Passwords are a little used feature of the ATA standard.
Here's some on it....
http://www.xbox-news.co.uk/extracting_pass.htm

The password is stored a non-data portion of the disk where all the drive parameter information is stored.

The BIOS in whatever PC it was in when passworded is what put it there.

When enabled, when the drive first starts up it asks the system for the password.

The system asks the user to enter it.

If the drive doesn't get the Pword it then it won't accept any following commands.

..........

The function has basically always been there but aside from random users it's only ever been used by Microsoft in the Xbox.

Here's a good description of how it works in the Xbox....
Just replace all references to "the Xbox's EEPROM" ~to~ "the PC's BIOS" as you read it and THEN maybe you'll understand the origional question..
http://www.xbox-linux.org/docs/hdpassword.html

Here's a page with some utilities that amy or may not be usefull.
http://www.xbox-scene.com/tools/tools.php?page=harddrive
The Xbox used 8Gb WD or 10Gb Seagates

Other Xbox sites might have some other utilities or ideas to help...
I do not think ChrisSchumann is right.
I've been unlocking hdd drives commercialy for some time. I have my own system and I know about few others. And everything tells the password is not stored in the drive electronics board.

Such protection would be useless, as it would be too easy to be broken. I've been exchanging the electronic boards while playing with the disk drives, and the result was allways the same. The protection status and password is stored on the drive platters.

RID is the one who should get the points.
I agree with For-Soft. I wrote my answer almost two years ago and I've learned a lot about drives in that time.

RID should get the points.