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Drivelock on HDD: Have password but need drivelock s/w
I have a drivelocked Toshiba harddrive on my Compaq Presario R3000. I know the drivelock password, but unfortunately my laptop's motherboard seems to have died or perhaps the BIOS battery is dead. I have an external USB housing for my laptop harddrive. Is there a software utility I can get which will allow me to enter in my drivelock password so I may use it externally on another system? My BIOS was the drivelock interface previously, but obviously that is no longer an option since the motherboard does not seem functional.
Let me emphasize that I do not need to disable the drivelock functionality or get around it. I know the password and merely need a s/w interface through which I can type it in and access my drive externally.
Thanks,
George
Let me emphasize that I do not need to disable the drivelock functionality or get around it. I know the password and merely need a s/w interface through which I can type it in and access my drive externally.
Thanks,
George
rindi
Connect it directly to another laptop and then disable the password. An indirect connection via USB doesn't allow you to enter passwords.
ASKER
Yeah I thought of that but unfortunately the only laptops I have access to expect ATA connections, but this particular drive is IDE. Is there a way to do this without hooking it up as the main drive on another laptop?
ATA and IDE is the same thing, or are you talking about SATA?
ASKER
Yeah I mean Serial ATA.
You can try an 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and connect it to a desktop PC.
ASKER
I do have access to a desktop, but it seems that the current BIOS version I have does not have a drive lock option. My BIOS info is:
Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
W7100NMS v3.0 123104 11:29:55
Is it possible that there is an update to this BIOS that will give me drive lock functionality? Also, is it definitely the case that any BIOS with drive lock functionality can allow you to type in a previously set drive lock password on another BIOS?
Thanks for the helpful ideas Rindi.
Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
W7100NMS v3.0 123104 11:29:55
Is it possible that there is an update to this BIOS that will give me drive lock functionality? Also, is it definitely the case that any BIOS with drive lock functionality can allow you to type in a previously set drive lock password on another BIOS?
Thanks for the helpful ideas Rindi.
You'll have to find a BIOS that has this feature, but if it has it, then you should be able to reset the password.
ASKER
I ordered a 2.5 inch to a 3.5 inch IDE converter for the drive, and a 3.5 inch IDE to SATA converter. I plugged it into a SATA laptop that has the BIOS feature but the hard drive wasn't detected at all in the BIOS. Maybe this can't be done through an IDE/SATA converter?
I haven't used such converters. Maybe you have to set the drive, to either master, slave or Cable select?
ASKER
I actually found a program called atapwd that seems like it will let you set/unset the hdd password without having to go through a physical bios that supports the feature. Unfortunately I think that the adapters I was messing with may have fried the power portion of my hdd, since I can't get it to spin up anymore, and this may be due to the 2.5 -> 3.5 inch adapter power being plugged in with the reverse polarity. I may have to send it out to a professional data recovery service at this point, but for future reference it looks like atapwd may be the way to go.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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