I'm working from a church that has a bunch of old sermons locked away on a hard drive that we don't know the hdd password to. Of course professional data recovery is way out of our price range, so trying to find a way to bypass or discover this lost password... Or at least get at (some?) of the data on it...

I have been trying to study similar posts, but just wanted some clarification. Do I need a a hardware reader in order to effectively use tools like MHDD?

I know and have confirmed the Seagate master password is working, but security is set to MAX so all I can do is erase the drive with the master password.

I'm sure it's far too simple a solution, but is there any chance that a platter swap might make some of the data (audio recordings) available? I tried swapping PCB but of course that didn't work, even from the same model drive.

I'm almost prepared to try a brute-force method based on "the password was a brand name in the A/V room 10 years ago"... But, does anyone have any better suggestions (while I get that programmed / running)?

I would love to take option number 1, but it looks like you only service Europe... Perhaps you could PM me where to obtain service from US?

Are we sure it's an ATA lock and not just that the data is encrypted? I think a better back story is required before we start messing with hardware. For all that's been described it could be something like TrueCrypt or FileVault encryption on it.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I'm walking into this 5 years after the fact, but from what has been told to me it is password-protected from BIOS,but not encrypted.