Password protected HDD

[Alison]

Hi all and I'm sorry my first post is asking for help.

My niece's laptop has decided to die a death and she's got all her college work and thousands of photos on the hard drive (of course she hasn't backed it up)

She put a password on the hard drive - which we know but the laptop isn't switching on at all and she needs the college stuff.

I tried putting the hard drive in my old laptop and it's telling me that the hard drive is password protected, but it's not accepting the password - however, the drive came from an Acer and my lappy is a Dell - would this be a problem to sorting this?

I've even tried putting the drive into a case and using it as an external drive, but of course, it can't be accessed because of the password - my laptop isn't even recognising the drive as being there.

Can anyone help please? She's got to have work in for Friday and can't access it (and yes, I have lectured her on backing up important stuff )

[fzabkar]

What is the model number of the HDD?

[pcimage]

You have PM

[pcimage]

And whereabouts in Scotland are you?

[Alison]

I forgot to look to see what model the hard drive was. It's a Western Digital but I'll pull it out and get the exact model. I'm in Dundee.

Her laptop seemed to be stuck in a BIOS loop. Every time she turned it on, it went straight into BIOS. She says it said if she put a password on the HDD she'd get into it. I should have taken the password off but in my infinite wisdom, I thought I'd start with the basics of replacing the CMOS battery. Now it won't turn on at all.

[pcimage]

If we can get the hard drive here, we can almost certainly unlock it for you.

Or I believe there are some cheap or “free” solutions (e.g. ZU, or WD Marvel) but have no experience of how good or easy to use they are.

[fzabkar]

HDDSuperTool has a script for removing WD passwords.

Alternatively, here is ZU:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=812

There is also a very long WD password thread in this forum.

[Alison]

I've spent the whole day on this and have managed to get the password off the hdd. I've even got it to load up Windows now - but half the keyboard isn't working. I need a wall to go and hit my head off.

[drun]

As long as the HDD is fine it's all good. You can try to hook up a USB keyboard to the laptop where the internal keyboard isn't working, that'd be the easiest way, or connect the HDD to another computer and make a backup that way.