So I've been scouring the forums and I decided to just finally join one and ask directly. This seemed to be the one with the most reputable respondents and it was where I was getting most of my information anyways, but nothing I've done has seemed to help me.

Now lemme qualify this question by saying I have VERY little software/hardware knowledge compared to you guys, so please use laymans and describe step-by-step how you want me to proceed or I'm sure I'll screw something up.

Now the question: I have this drive (see topic name) and every software I've run has come up shortchanged, I am close to just sticking a bigass magnet next to it and reformatting. (I'd actually like to know if that's an option...) I don't care about the data, a client of mine gave me this because he knows I like to mess around with computers, at first it was a fun challenge but now that I've been more or less brick-walled I need some straight answers on how to unlock it. Most of the googling I've done has just led me to people with Western Digital HDD's and that default master password (WDCWDCWDC.... etc) but it obvious I've tried that and it's done nothing. I have a Hirens Boot CD and an Ubuntu 10.04 Boot CD along with and external, bigass HDD housing, 2 8GB flash drives and Zero Blank CDs. Please help me, I don't want to spend money to open this when I can spend half as much to get a twice as big hard drive. Thank you so much.

so none of the 56,000 odd results in google, such as this one, help?

http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html
or "master password for HITACHI series DK23AA, DK23BA and DK23CA -> 32 spaces"

You cant say "nothing I have done worked" as that doesnt help us know what you have done, and we could be suggesting things you have tried already, wasting everyones time.

http://malthus.zapto.org/search.php?keywords=ata+password

maybe victoria software or hhdd from the homepage of this forum will help.

There is no simple software solution with Hitachi drives for password removal.

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I think ZU is a relatively simple software solution, although you may need to get the drive into "safe mode" in order to apply it. Even then the procedure is relatively simple.

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