i have a 2tb wd20ears 00s8b1 wich i put in a lg bluray hd recorder (hr550c) the lh formated the hdd and it workes fine but i now want to use the hdd in a pc but it wont format it shows unalocated space and gives an eror mesage when i try and initialize iv tryed many formating tools and some show it as write protect the 250gb hdd that came with the lg dose the exact same thing and both work fine in the lg player any help would be appreciated

Hi,

Try to use a hex viewer to wipe first sector of the drive, restart and try again.

the drive dose not show up in windows will a hex editer see it thanx

i get unabel to read sector 0 the drive may not be ready , contain bad sectors or require read permissions

Are you doing these tests with the WD drive attached via USB (i.e. via a USB-SATA adapter)?

You could look at booting to MHDD boot cd.
Set BIOS to IDE or Comaptible (not SATA or Enhanced)
Boot to MHDD, select drive & it will tell you if its bsy ie bsy is high lighed or locked with a password

Then we can see what your options are

Loki

Exactly, but only if the drive is not being attached via USB - hence my question to the OP

ok il try Booting to MHDD

Sorry I didnt see your post until after i'd posted it (didnt submit stright away as I got distracted by a customer)

Loki

No worries and I hope you agree that my question is vital for the OP to answer - otherwise any investigation is a waste of time. I fully expect MHDD (when used in the correct way, with suitable BIOS settings and other requirements), will show just what you mentioned - good call.

Agreed

Loki

its locked to ata password
and its an internat drive

Is the drive even detected on the BIOS?

yes it shows up in the bios

Until this password is removed you wont be able to format or access the drive.

Your next question is obvious. How do i remove the password?
DIY possibly with the right knowledge & software, problem is that anyone who helps you circumvent the passward could end up carrying out a criminal offence if it was found out later that the drive didnt belong to you. As their is no way for us to validate ownership then responses will be few.
Best advice is to take it to your local dr company, prove ownership & pay their fee to unlock it.
It shouldnt cost to much.

Loki

@loki,

All agreed

@zipo99,

All of the error messages you got (including the drive being "write protected") are due to an ATA password being set on the drive (that's why I replied as I did in the other thread that you started, about needing to find the real cause of that error message). Apparently your PC's BIOS wasn't highlighting that an ATA password was set for secondary drives (some BIOSes do; some don't). As loki explained, you can't use format to bypass an ATA password.

One other approach that you could take, is to research online whether the ATA password set by that LG PVR, has been found and discussed e.g. on forums related to that device. If that password is known, then you can use MHDD (or HDAT32 or various other utilities) to remove a known ATA password.

Thanx for all your help
Just spent about an hour trying to get hdd unlock wizard to work but no luck

Would a firmware update reset the password ?

No.

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