Drive unlock and data safety

[pcuser]

My laptop hard drive has been "locked". Well, I do not know if the terminology is correct, but upon booting it asks for HDD Password which I have no idea what might be. The laptop is an Acer Travelmate 663 and the Hard drive is a 40Gb Seagete ST94011A.

I was recommended to try MHDD and as I see from the documentation it has the ability to unlock the hard drive (by using the commands UNLOCK and DISPWD). I have not tried anything yet, because I still have an elementary question. Assuming that everything goes fine, will my data survive, or the procedure will erase them? I do not care at all about the disk (which I have already replaced), but just for my data.

Thanks.

[pcimage]

MHDD can only unlock if u know password.

To unlock without p/w needs PC3000 or Salvation.

Where are u based?

[pcuser]

To know which password? Not the HDD I guess, if I knew it I would not need any utility to unlock. I guess you mean the Master Password as written in the documentation of MHDD. I did not know it, but there is a utility, found in the internet, which is called mastid, and allows one to find the Master Password from the MasterID (appears in the security column of the BIOS).

However I tried all that, but it did not work. MHDD sees the drive as locked by an ATA Password, however I cannot unlock it, neither with a Master Password nor with a User Password.

I am in Italy.

[pcimage]

I do mean the HDD password.

Alternatively you could try AFF repair station.

It's free to diagnose and last time I looked, and unlock was about $40.

[pcuser]

AFF does not (and will not) support Seagate 2.5" drives.

[pcimage]

pcuser... yes, you are correct.

I've never had to use AFF myself, I use PC3000 or Salvation.

I must say that I found Salvation easier to use for unlocking Seagate Momentus.

[pcuser]

Anyhow, I cannot buy salvation or PC3000 to unlock a single drive. As said in the first post, I want just the data. Does anybody, who has the software and the hardware to do the job, live in a reasonable distance from Trento, Italy? If yes, I could bring the drive in person.

[darkforce1]

Which country r u from ?
DF

[pepe]

try them:
http://www.ultrarecovery.com

regards,
pepe

[murilladas]

pcuser,

Hi, i read your post and i am interested by the program mastid.exe, but i don't find in any place, can you helpme send it please?

My email is murilladas@gmail.com

Thanks!

Sorry my english es very poor i am spanish sorry