About 5 years ago I made the mistake of putting this drive into a laptop without knowing that the laptop had a hard drive password set in the BIOS, and the laptop set a password on the drive. After repeated searching for solutions and finding none, I gave up and it went into the parts box.

Now I found another DK23DA-20F, and I want to try the circuit board swap approach so I can use it as a small USB drive.

Passworded drive: DK23DA-20F firmware A0F3
Unpassworded drive: DK23DA-20F firmware A0A1

Will this work?

I take it you remove both boards (after marking which is which). Then you clamp the good drive's circuit board onto its HDA and boot it up, and use MHDD to spin it down. Then you unclamp the board and clamp it to the passworded HDA.

After this, do you just use PWD to set a new password, or do you spin it back up first and then PWD?

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/user/TerraformingMaster

Yes can work, but make you sure of the NEW PCB is in good condition, the firmware is mistake maybe similar, and the plates can acept this new pcb, make carefull whem you change the NEW PBC, DESMAGNETIC FIRST YOUR HAND OR USE PROTECTION, YOU HAVE STATICAL ENERGY AND CAN BE DAMAGE THE PCB OK.

Have you tried it yourself on this model drive, and are speaking from experience, or guessing?

I wonder if it is an idea to upgrade the new drive to the later firmware, or if it doesn't matter.

Feklar, HaQue,
ZU.Betta 2.0. from Zong to help.
replacement PCB will give you nothing.

MICRO-STAR MS-7184 motherboard, AMD Hammer chipset... I'm not sure ZU will work on this, and it is my only desktop machine.

Tried it in an Intel chipset laptop, but the only access to exit safe mode was to put paper between the contacts and the HDA, but the first time the paper ripped when I tried pulling it out when it said "SCREW IT IN NOW" because the screws were too tight, the second time the paper pulled out but the HDA didn't make good contact because the screws were too loose.

I found where I can get 2 40 gig laptop Seagates for $7.50 each, and decided I had had enough frustration with the damn thing. But a circuit board swap I could do on the desktop with the 3.5 / 2.5 adaptor.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/user/TerraformingMaster

Well the procedure you want to apply is wrong... For the password the only and easy solution is to unlock via advance tool like PC3000 or Salvation it need only one click and 5 second to complete and DK23DA-20F Module is supported by these tools. If you don't have tool go to any person near you who has these tool or you can send to me.

Good Luck

You know why id does not work ?

In a normal drive that has an ATA password set on the HDD. If you want to change or remove the password, the HDD will ask you the current password, even if you have already started the computer by providing the password. I do not know if the hot-swap thing work, if it does, you can at least copy the data (if that is what you are after).

I think I found a way to do it using TREX. Anyone know, is it SECI or ICES?

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/user/TerraformingMaster

As far as I remember pc3000 use terminal to unlock these drives , Its not standard IBM/Hitachi procedure for these .