Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of independencetech
independencetech

asked on

Cannot access a hitachi hard drive password is encrypted

I have tried to format the hitachi laptop harddrive -- I cannot format or remove any files -- Is there a way to format this drive even though it has a encrypted password

It does not allow me to do anything to it

thanks
Avatar of jkalnasy
jkalnasy
Flag of United States of America image

You could try using a bootable linux CD such as knoppix or ubuntu and boot from the live cd then reformat the hard drive that way.  

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.knoppix.net/
try Active Kill Disk.
http://www.killdisk.com/

the free version is enough for the job
If you mean to say the HDD is password protected, then I'm afraid the only thing you could do is phone the manufacturer's support. They will want to have some proof of ownership, though.

If I remember correctly, it would not even work if you replaced the HDD by another one, because the password is not stored on it; it's store on a separate chip. So as long as someone cannot proof to be the legal owner, the laptop may be unusable.
Avatar of nobus
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of greg_vander
greg_vander
Flag of France 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
Avatar of Dr. Klahn
Dr. Klahn

Not all Hitachi laptop drives can be erased, if a password is set.  I have here a HTS541610J9SA00, 100 GB SATA.  I've tried every tool I could find, and the password can't be cleared by any of them.  Anybody reading this can have it for the postage it takes to send it.

Hitachi states more-or-less this on their web site, "So you forgot your drive password?  We can't help you.  The methods used to encrypt the data have no loopholes."

If the data is critical, you could try obtaining an identical drive without a password, and then using that drive's controller to do a hot swap with the encrypted drive.  However, even if this worked it's probable that it would only result in full access to a drive with the data still encrypted by the password, and there's a high probability of blowing up the controller in the process.
Addendum to the above:  I didn't make it clear that I tred to clear the password and format the drive, not recover the data.  It may have sounded like I wanted to recover the data.  No tool I've tried can clear the password, not even leaving the drive in an erased state.  So the drive can't be reformatted, either.
independencetech,

can we take the way you closed the question as a confirmation that low-level formatting with the tool proposed by greg_vander actually helped regain that drive?
This would be most interesting news.
I'm also curious to know whether the HDDGURU tool was able to clear the password on the drive.