Before I start a BIG thank you for this great website sharing professional knowledge for free!

I have a Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 ATA disk in my laptop and after an unexpected forced shutdown the disk is unreadable.
Connecting it in a host computer I can see the ATA protection is enabled in High level. I have never set any (user or master) password before and my BIOS didn’t give any such feature/setting.

I have found tools to remove the protection but only if I had the master password.
My understanding so far is that there is no such thing as "default password" and no commonly used ones known? Hitachi agreed on that.
Repair Station does not support this model as I believe Hitachi is the black sheep when it comes to ATA unlocking.

Is there even any firmware that ignores ATA protection or is there any other sw/hw tool to help me out. As its for personal use, the most economical would be my favourite and probably a x000 $ solution will be out of budget

I apreciate your time and thanks anyway
George

Most likely you have a problem with Service Area.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Thanks for this quick reply...!
What would I need to check and what are the options here?

You need to take it to a pro.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

No user option, sorry.