We have an old Conner HD and it has been Password locked. Anyone have any ideas on how to remove the password so we can access it.

We have not seen a Conner drive in years. It brings back memories. But, never seen one password locked.

Regards,

havent seen password on these drives also i would check pcb if were you .

It's (probably) one of the cheap Conner/Seagate transition drives. Like an ST31276A. Which case it does have a diag terminal

http://www.techbit.cz/files/obrazky/muz ... 76A_01.jpg

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

No it does not it is a CF210A using a diagnostic program it says it's password protected. I will look for a PCBA for the drive.

Thanks

Don't think it's the PCB (very small chances, but it's worth a try). In any case if it is a CFS series I can do something (but have to send the drive).

I have never seen a CFS210A locked by a password before. Only 2.5" Conners.

Do you want the data or just unlock+erase the drive?

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

Let me try a PCB.

did it even support ATA password as per specification?, maybe is a disk encryption type ?

It was not locked. It's an older drive that works on the CHS addressing not LBA. So all my tools were telling me it was locked. I figured this out as I got a duplicate working drive hooked up and it said the same thing.

Drive has been cloned to a file and data has been recovered.

Excellent , good job

Reviving a really old thread.....

Received one of these in for recovery (a CP3204F) which does identify, but with 0 capacity and password protected (high). Not sure if changing a PCB on this old boy would help or not. Any advice?

Most likely it's not password locked neither PCB problem.
I would say that you should start by reading the drive using CHS instead of LBA.

You might either need something like HRT-DRE or PC-3000 ISA or a very old motherboar to read even a good drive of those.

Sure .. the drive might/can be bad but unless you have a known good drive of those to be sure that your system/tool can read/work with those drives you will never be able to tell if it's a drive problem or if your tools simply don't work with those drives ...


Also you can do some stuff with terminal but at this point i would start by checking if the system can read a good drive of those at all ....

Wanna outsorce that project/recovery to Portugal ? I think that i can help you out, as long as you are willing to .... pay

Also check the PCB and MCU. Is it a Motorola, Uxx, Ferro or ConnerTech ?

Regards.

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Does the drive make some strange cliking or clonking noises ?

Or it looks like it's spinning properly and the heads are not making sounds like they are hitting constantly at the limiter ?

If all looks normally attempting to detect the drive with something like PC-3000 ISA or HRT is the first step to do.

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Ended up using Linux and copied everything 100%.

For reference older motherboards (i have one PII 350 Mhz system with award BIOS) have an option to detect the drive either by LBA or CHS. If yous elect CHS and input the values that are on the drive label then it would detect ok and you wouldn't have any issue copying the files/detecting the drive, assuming the drive is running OK.

Other option would be to use HRT ATA terminal or universal utility to read by CHS or somesort of MHDD scripting would also have been possible.

Regards.

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