Samsung HDD locked me out

[mbba]

Hi guys well the story goes like this i bought a Acer travelmate from a second hand shop for £50 which was a good bargain and there 5 more like this if any one need 1 you can get them from cash converters in manchester well thats not my story the gamble was it had no power adapter and sold as seen and no return so i figured well as a person with computer tech knoledge what would be a problem with this laptop i can fix and i was wrong first thing i did wen i reached home was use a universal adapter which i had then power it up guess what all was working and beatyfull now the story gets interesting while browsing the ol big gate xp home edition i started getting a knocking sound which sounded like the hdd has problems so i decided to format it an use a good until so called hdd regenerator 1.51 and guess what it removed a bad sector on the first block after that i restarted it asked me for a hdd password well i never asked me before only wen i formated it. So i started googleing it and found out about hdd security on 2.5" hdds now am stuck i also got the atapwds victoria and other utils i got from the net nothing worked. so i thought to get another hdd thinking its simple throw the hdd which came with the latp top and get another used 40gb hdd that alwo got locked now i got 2 hdds locked and looking for a solution


any help guys thank you another thing any idea what a master password is coz most of the utils ask for that

[jono-ats]

If your drive is knocking, you would be well advised to replace it. Mobile drives are cheap now, as is the peace of mind . . .

Jon

[rchadwick]

Is there a Password to access the BIOS? With Laptops, if you set a BIOS Password, it may set a HD password as well.

[dick]

Are you able to enter the bios and save changes?
What is the exact model of your acer?
There are ways to generate a master password depending on the model.

[mbba]

hi guys thanks for the posts

dick yes i can access my bios and its an ACER travelmate 2300

rchadwick no the Bios password is disabled and the password settings for the bios and HDD are separate

jono i have another HDD i bought and it locked that one too and the knocking sound isnt a bad HDD if i listen carefully it actually parks the head if the password is wrong

Last edited by mbba on May 25th, 2008, 10:37, edited 1 time in total.

[mbba]

rchadwick also if i remove the hdd and access the bois the option to reset or set the hdd PWD is not showing up on the bios

[mbba]

dick i can access the bios and can do everthing except reseting the HDD PWD

[rchadwick]

Have you made sure you have no Passwords set whatsoever in the BIOS?

[mbba]

Have you made sure you have no Passwords set whatsoever in the BIOS?

110% no password on bios only HDD and if i move the HDD on another laptop i have a fujitsu it still asks for a PWD the strange thing is the bios locks any HDD i fix on it and i have done my research its a firmware security all i need is a master password to try it out because all the UTILs iv got asks for a master password to unlock it the UTILS iv used are atapwd, UHDD, and victoria

[dick]

@mbba

I have sent you a pm.