Hi all and I'm sorry my first post is asking for help.

My niece's laptop has decided to die a death and she's got all her college work and thousands of photos on the hard drive (of course she hasn't backed it up)

She put a password on the hard drive - which we know but the laptop isn't switching on at all and she needs the college stuff.

I tried putting the hard drive in my old laptop and it's telling me that the hard drive is password protected, but it's not accepting the password - however, the drive came from an Acer and my lappy is a Dell - would this be a problem to sorting this?

I've even tried putting the drive into a case and using it as an external drive, but of course, it can't be accessed because of the password - my laptop isn't even recognising the drive as being there.

Can anyone help please? She's got to have work in for Friday and can't access it (and yes, I have lectured her on backing up important stuff )

What is the model number of the HDD?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

You have PM

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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And whereabouts in Scotland are you?

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

I forgot to look to see what model the hard drive was. It's a Western Digital but I'll pull it out and get the exact model. I'm in Dundee.

Her laptop seemed to be stuck in a BIOS loop. Every time she turned it on, it went straight into BIOS. She says it said if she put a password on the HDD she'd get into it. I should have taken the password off but in my infinite wisdom, I thought I'd start with the basics of replacing the CMOS battery. Now it won't turn on at all.

If we can get the hard drive here, we can almost certainly unlock it for you.

Or I believe there are some cheap or “free” solutions (e.g. ZU, or WD Marvel) but have no experience of how good or easy to use they are.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

HDDSuperTool has a script for removing WD passwords.

Alternatively, here is ZU:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=812

There is also a very long WD password thread in this forum.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I've spent the whole day on this and have managed to get the password off the hdd. I've even got it to load up Windows now - but half the keyboard isn't working. I need a wall to go and hit my head off.

As long as the HDD is fine it's all good. You can try to hook up a USB keyboard to the laptop where the internal keyboard isn't working, that'd be the easiest way, or connect the HDD to another computer and make a backup that way.