Unlocking ATA Password for Western Digital

[narcotrix]

when booting this morning, I noticed my hd is missing in bios (the field is blank)
[...]
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This device does not support LBA mode. MHDD will NOT work with this device.

Both of these symptoms show that the current problem with the drive is not (or not only) an ATA password being set. If you need the data from this drive, then IMHO you'll likely have to send the drive to a suitably-experienced professional for accurate diagnosis and recovery.

So I tried out a couple stuff and with gparted the drive is back in bios...
but still you think i will not be able to use the hdd ?
Does the hex not shows a pass ?

That is realy frustrating... I'll try 1 more thingtomorrow and then i'll decide if I trash it.

Btw, thx for reply.

[Vulcan]

So I tried out a couple stuff and with gparted the drive is back in bios...

That makes no sense to me. There is nothing that gparted does (which just accesses the user LBAs on the drive) which should be able to change whether the drive is recognised by the BIOS (which uses an Identify Device command), or not.

but still you think i will not be able to use the hdd ?

Unfortunately your description of the changing symptoms, and lack of detail about exactly what tests/changes are being done, make it impossible for me to comment further. As I say above, gparted cannot have the effect which you describe. The best I can guess is that the drive has an underlying internal problem, which is intermittent - and you are linking the change in its behaviour (e.g. reported in the BIOS or not) to using gparted, when the real reason for the change in behaviour is actually elsewhere. But that is a guess, due to the limitations of remote diagnosis - you can see everything which is happening during your testing; I can't!

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[narcotrix]

So I tried out a couple stuff and with gparted the drive is back in bios...

That makes no sense to me. There is nothing that gparted does (which just accesses the user LBAs on the drive) which should be able to change whether the drive is recognised by the BIOS (which uses an Identify Device command), or not.

but still you think i will not be able to use the hdd ?

Unfortunately your description of the changing symptoms, and lack of detail about exactly what tests/changes are being done, make it impossible for me to comment further. As I say above, gparted cannot have the effect which you describe. The best I can guess is that the drive has an underlying internal problem, which is intermittent - and you are linking the change in its behaviour (e.g. reported in the BIOS or not) to using gparted, when the real reason for the change in behaviour is actually elsewhere. But that is a guess, due to the limitations of remote diagnosis - you can see everything which is happening during your testing; I can't!

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hi Vulcan

I managed to make win xp recognise the hdd !

Now what ?

I did run Victoria but, of course, I Need a pass

Thx

[Vulcan]

Hi,

I managed to make win xp recognise the hdd !

Depending on exactly what you mean by "recognise" (do you mean that a drive letter for this drive was seen in My Computer"?), and depending on exactly what you did to cause this new change in behaviour, then that likely means that you are posting in the wrong thread, and that there is no ATA password on your drive.

Now what ?

If you (continue to) accept responsibility for the risks of DIY recovery, then search for clone or cloning on the forum (this topic has been discussed many times), and perform a raw (i.e. sector-by-sector) clone of that 250GB drive onto another empty drive (same capacity or larger), or into an equivalent file. Your choice of cloning software depends on many factors including your budget, skills, expectations of support etc. etc. Software such as Acronis & Ghost would not be my choice even if your drive is (temporarily?) readable, due to the inability to stop & re-start the cloning, in case your underlying problem (whatever it is) occurs again, as well as other reasons.

As I said before, without a confident diagnosis of the real problem with that drive, the changing behaviour & lack of details make it impossible to know what will happen next, so any advice could be wrong or out-of-date, when/if the situation changes (in addition to the usual DIY risks).

[gathor]

Managed to unlock, at last. Turns out it wont work in any laptop I tried, impossible to boot up from any device other than locked HDD as it asks for password immediately. Plugged it in my brother's PC as SATA, MHDD recognised it without a problem. Run scripts provided, got my 22.bin file and password was there. (01 07 00 - header) 30 00 17 00 30 00 26 00 17 00 1E. Removed the 00's and used the keyboard scan codes linked in this thread to decode it. Now I got fully functional 320GB HDD up and ready to use. There is a hope:)

Narcotix, yours is desktop hard drive isnt? I dont see the password header there, must be different in 3.5 HDDs. Have you tried ZU?

[dick]

Managed to unlock, at last. Turns out it wont work in any laptop I tried, impossible to boot up from any device other than locked HDD as it asks for password immediately. Plugged it in my brother's PC as SATA, MHDD recognised it without a problem. Run scripts provided, got my 22.bin file and password was there. (01 07 00 - header) 30 00 17 00 30 00 26 00 17 00 1E. Removed the 00's and used the keyboard scan codes linked in this thread to decode it. Now I got fully functional 320GB HDD up and ready to use. There is a hope:)

Narcotix, yours is desktop hard drive isnt? I dont see the password header there, must be different in 3.5 HDDs. Have you tried ZU?

Gathor matey you read through the thread, got the required info and then resolved your problem. Well done!

[tr0ubles0me]

I've read all 25 pages of this thread and gain a pretty good knowledge, but still cannot deal with my problem. So here it is:

My Acer Aspire 5920G got fried. I had set a HDD password in the BIOS. The password is 1234 (put it there just to use the provided function, and now I regret immensely). The HDD is Western Digital WD2500BEVS-22UST0 (Scorpio).

I borrowed a friend's Toshiba Satellite laptop, put my HDD in it aand booted up. It showed HDD password unlock: Enter Password. So I entered 1234, but it said "FAIL". After 3 attempts the laptop restarted and again the same thing happened.

So I burned a cd with MHDD and reached the point where I had to choose 1 for master password unlock, or 0 for user password unlock. I chose user password unlock, entered 1234 and got FAIL. Tried then master password unlock, entered wdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwdcwd. FAIL again.


I've read that maybe my ACER's BIOS encrypted the password and then wrote it to the HDD encrypted (in that case I'll just run a script and retrieve it like I don't know it). I've also read a second variant that MHDD may need the scancodes for 1234, and I have to enter them in MHDD?


I need your help. I know the password and just need a way to enter it. The scancodes for 1234 are 02 03 04 05. If the password is not encrypted by some ACER algorithm, how do I enter the scancodes? With spaces or not, 02030405 or 02 03 04 05?

I don't want to try the long procedure with the 22.bin, etc, as I know the password and there must be easier way to enter it.

Thanks.

[dick]

I don't want to try the long procedure with the 22.bin, etc, as I know the password and there must be easier way to enter it.

That is the easy way!

[gathor]

It took some time to read this thread and few tries to make it work as well but yeah, almost everything one needs to know is here. I also downloaded windows 98 floppy boot disk and made my usb flash drive bootable. No need to boot up from mhdd cdrom.

tr0ubles0me - get the 22.bin file, it is not long procedure takes few minutes to make it. You will see the password immediately. You may have made a mistake when setting the password and you try to input the wrong one, happens.

[maverick_abc]

Success, I finally did it!
The third version of ZU worked for me (zu.betta.050911), almost gave up. It was a nice surprise to see "UNLOCK DONE".
MHDD shows that the password is off. Then I had a problem with formating drive in Windows disk management and other partition tools but MHDD coped with this (I've used commands CLRMBR and FDISK) and now i can use WD5000AVDS in my PC

Thanks for this thread. I still wonder what was the default password used by this PVR because WDC.. didn't worked.

Have a nice day everyone

hello friend, could you explain to me how you used the "ZU" to unlock and remove the password from western digital hd thanks

[don250r]

ALRIGHT!!
finally successfully unlocked a wd3200bevt-75a23t0

and after trying on a whim..

got a toshiba mk2565gsx and a mk25555gsx unlocked using the info in this forum

many thx guys

ps you might have to read this thread a COUPLE of times for it all to soak in....

now on to seagate.....

[don250r]

stupid question time:

why does zu work on toshiba hdd's for me and not others?

could it be the sata-ide adapter or perhaps a combination of my hardware?

any theories before i start on this experiment?

[Pointy]

I run my own repair shop in the UK, and thought this would be a useful service to offer to my customers. I have been messing with computers since my dad got me a ZX81 for my 15th birthday.

Anyway I have read through this entire thread about 6 times now, and experimented on several WD laptop drives I have here, with some success but there are still some unanswered questions...

1) The relationship between the cs.bin and the drive? Older drives seem to work ok, but newer drives give 'drive reports error' or 'no drq'. Is a different cs.bin file required for newer drives or does this method no longer work?

2) The relationship between the machine used to enter the password and the password. The attached pic shows a WD1200 with the password on and off. The differences are obvious but the password I set was only 4 chars long.

Hope someone can shed some light on this subject as I am finding it quite fascinating.

Regards,

Les

Attachments

What's the password?

[SAjunky]

I don't read this thread and can't comment on your case (and latest drives denerally), but can answer #2.

Yes, it depends on the BIOS. Some (particularly laptops) will do some hash function from your passsword and system ID's, so it won't be visible in plain ASCII form. If your motherboard is dead, you can't see your data on other one. It is one of the reason it is generally a bad idea to protect your data by system password. And false sence of security too.

[Pointy]

I don't read this thread and can't comment on your case (and latest drives denerally), but can answer #2.

Yes, it depends on the BIOS. Some (particularly laptops) will do some hash function from your passsword and system ID's, so it won't be visible in plain ASCII form. If your motherboard is dead, you can't see your data on other one. It is one of the reason it is generally a bad idea to protect your data by system password. And false sence of security too.

Thanks for the reply,

This makes sense as the password was set on a laptop via the bios. It also explains why I couldn't unlock it using other tools, even though I knew the password. It's rather worrying that setting a simple password could cause all sorts of issues should the machine die!

Regards,

Les

[paranoid]

Hello guys , can anyone tell me what steps should i follow to unlock a western digital scorpio blue WD320BEVT?
I had this on my old toshiba (not quite old but now got a new pc) , i didnt set any pass on my toshiba but when i installed the hdd in the new pc it asks for a password.
I dont need the data just need the 320 Gb storage to use.
Thanks in advance.

[hexacid]

hey everyone i whould like help recovering my hdd pw pls
and if you can point me to some tutorial im interested in lurning.

Attachments

[Nipponauto]

Hi everyone,
Hoping someone can help me unlock a WD2500BEVS hard drive. I have been through this thread umpteen times but I cannot get past the steps as shown below,

LINE 1: RESET
LINE 2: WAITNBSY
LINE 3: REGS = $57 $44 $43 $00 $00 $A0 $8A
LINE 4: WAITNBSY
LINE 5: REGS = $00 $02 $00 $00 $0F $E0 $21
LINE 6: WAITNBSY
LINE 7: CHECKDRQ
LINE 8: SECTORSTO = 42.BIN
ERROR: drive reports error


LINE 1: RESET
LINE 2: WAITNBSY
LINE 3: REGS = $45 $0B $00 $44 $57 $A0 $80
LINE 4: WAITNBSY
LINE 5: REGS = $D6 $01 $BE $4F $C2 $A0 $B0
LINE 6: WAITNBSY
LINE 7: CHECKDRQ
LINE 8: SECTORSFROM = CS.BIN
ERROR: drive reports error

I'm obviously missing a bit of info but I can't figure out what, anyone help please?

[SAjunky]

I had this on my old toshiba (not quite old but now got a new pc) , i didnt set any pass on my toshiba but when i installed the hdd in the new pc it asks for a password.

The easiest way is to put it back and look in the BIOS setup whether is there any security features enabled (including setup password). Disable all and I think your hard drive will be freed. Otherwise read this thread or spend more time searching net (it might be not worth though).

[gathor]

Hi hexacid. Your password is easily visible. See my earlier post and you will see how simple it is.

Ps. Like Winnie The Pooh much? Worth looking at one of his friends, wink wink, nudge nudge