Hi All,

I have 2 PCs with a motherboard that when a hard drive with an ATA Hard Disk Password is connected (e.g as a secondary, Master) on the IDE channel it tells you and asks you for the password - then you can run software scans using tools like R Studio.

I have about 60 PCs, the only computers that have this ability are ones with an asrock k7vm4 motherboard. I have emailed Asrock and they could not help me by suggesting if there is a newer model with this feature, they said none of them have this feature. Thanks for nothing..
The 2 motherboards i have like this are now dead, stopped working.

Does anybody have any other motherboard model that you know can do this?

I have 2 Notebook HDDs which my clients have damaged notebooks, they know the HDD password but i cannot disable the password (MHDD does not seem to unlock the drives) and no other tool i have tried (including AFF Repair station) can either ask me to enter the password or disable it.

Both these hard drives are Hitatchi Drives and i do not know the probe locations to use the PC-3000 PCI, they are not in the pc-3000 manual.


Any suggestions on another motherboard to buy?

Hi!!

Suggestion, I find that it does not go to decide with others montherboards and yes finding one notebook equal or very similar to the one of its customer and typing the password.

I think that thus it can find a solution.

I wait to have helped!

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Interesting problem! Do you know what is the exact model of the Hitachi drives....?

scegs

It's a Hitachi Travelstar HTS541060G9AT00. This is not supported in the PC-3000 PCI that i have.

I just found an asrock k7vm4 motherboard on Ebay UK but it just sold, nuts!

The reason i prefer not to go and buy a whole notebook every time i need to unlock a password is that it would be very expensive, the good think about the old asrock k7vm4 i used to have on a pc was, you simply connect the drive with an IDE cable, the BIOS would ask you for the password and give you 5 attmempts, if it was not correct, reboot and 5 more..over and over. So the owner would usually supply a bios, admin, windows login password and usually one of those were the same as the hdd password and bingo! It's working and you can use any software to backup the data.

It's ideal if the notebook no longer works.

So if anybody else is using a PC like the one i had with an asrock k7vm4 motherboard for this type of job, please let me know what model motherboard you know can do this. Thanks a lot.

PC3000 UDMA version can remove password on those drives.

I know, but i don't have $5000 EUROS at the moment to buy one, with a motherboard like the one i used to have (Cost: $50-100 EUROS) and a known password, it could let me access the password. My question is - does anybody know of any other motherboard with this type of feature to enter the password?

If you looking for some program to remove password when the password is known,
you at the right place - MHDD can do this.

Also simple program atapwd can do this as well.

Of course you can get data ONLY if password is known.

Sometimes password (on 2.5" drives) will not work as simple text then (I think)
a program called Victoria (author is one of the cleverest)
has a feature to remove password using hex.

I have tried MHDD, it does not remove the password for this disk. I have tried it also in hex.

Hi zed,

MHDD works fine to remove password for this drive so maybe you got some
other problem.

Your drive does not use probes for password removal, but you need UDMA or better
to work with this drive type you have.

Actually, I have seen problem with other Hitachi where security sectors become
mixed with neighbouring sectors and then normal password removal cannot work
and you need to be able to read necessary sectors with some app. maybe this is
your case.

Zed,

I had in the past a case seemed, hdd this with pwd and I wise person the password, only that the password was inserted for notbook and alone functioned typing the password for notebook or one seemed...
has differences in the keyboard keys...
can in informing the password to them?

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Thanks for the replies, i found a motherboard and used the password i needed.