Locked Hard Drive

[Hawke]

I have a Western Digital WD1200 IDE 120 gigabyte Caviar SE hard drive that’s locked. Is there a way to unlock it. I realize it has to do with a messed up MBR. Is there a way to refresh the MBR? Or rebuild it? I’m pretty computer savvy, but this is a new one on me. I really don’t want to throw this thing out. The data doesn't mean anything. i just want to use it as a blank primary hard drive. I ran the WD utilities to zero it out and it says ’Drive is locked. Error code 220"

According to the WD website - Error code 220 - Security feature of the drive reports locked status. Some vendors use the security feature to ensure the usage of only specific drives in their system, or the drive may have been locked by a user using a third party utility to enable this feature. The same utility and the original code used to lock the drive are necessary to unlock this drive. Please contact the system vendor for the above-mentioned information.

I have always owned this hard drive. I bought it directly from a store off the shelf. I’ve owned this drive for 5 years. The data is not an issue.
I’m forbidden access to it. I wasn’t using any utility to lock it. I ran the WD utilities and got the code. It spins up and the bios detects it. It’s been formatted over 5 years about 5 times. It ran XP Home. I was trying to zero it out.
Using it now as a primary drive is just principle with me. . I tried accessing it with a Win98 boot disk Fdisk , Partition Manager, and just outright formatting it using the Windows XP setup. It spins up and the bios detects it. I tried the fixmbr and fixboot commands from the recovery console. AND some MBR utilities. They say there isn’t a drive there. But Bios says there is. Windows PE (run off of a CD) says there isn't.
Any suggestions?

[harddrivespecialist]

Its time to buy a new drive.

[msurgeon]

Problem has nothing to do with corrupted MBR. This is a hardware-level security feature that requires professional-level tools to unlock. If the data is truly unimportant then you will have to say a tearful farewell to this drive.

[Zorb]

Wait a minute... What did you use to try to zero it out? Some of those utilities out there use the Security Erase Unit command, which can add a password to a drive. It happened to me when I was testing out some freewares on machines I was donating. I ended up find the password with a google search, because it used the same password on every drive you erased with it. MHDD can unlock your drive and remove the password once you find out what it is.

Problem has nothing to do with corrupted MBR. This is a hardware-level security feature that requires professional-level tools to unlock. If the data is truly unimportant then you will have to say a tearful farewell to this drive.

There is no data he wanted, he was trying to erase the drive when this happened. Reread first post.

[Hawke]

I used the Western Digital drive utilities DOS version. I was trying to zero the thing out and it came up with the locked message.

[Dmitry Postrigan]

I guess you can try http://hddunlock.com

[Zorb]

I used the Western Digital drive utilities DOS version. I was trying to zero the thing out and it came up with the locked message.

But the drive worked before and you are sure? I'd be on the phone with WD if that's the case, but that being said, it's a pretty odd bug if their program did that...

[guru]

I cannot see how it could have happend... Sounds not right ;o)

[Zorb]

One series of Travelstars had issues with SA corruption resulting in the drive falsely thinking it was locked with a password that could include characters that couldn't even be typed, and were even a violation of the ATA security spec for usable password characters.

[guru]

Yes so did the Seagate Momentus. I'm talking about a WD drive here. :O)

[Hawke]

I was trying to zero the drive out. I was using the WD tools. There was nothing shady about it. I owned the drive for 5 years. it ran Windows XP Home. I formatted/zeroed it once a year. This time it came up with the locked error. I've told you everything.

[pepe]

isn't that tool using the security erase function of the drive?
if yes, that means that the utility locks the drive with some pwd, then uses the security_erase_prepare and the security_erase command to zero it with maximal possible speed.
If the process is interrupted by a power failure for example, or not successful, the drive remains locked.

pepe

[Zorb]

There are a couple other programs that do that as well with the security erase command. Last I remembered, WD's utility just wrote zero to every sector.

A utility using the security erase command would likely not report its progress during the erase, while one that manually overwrote everything should.

[Hawke]

yea. the WD utilities just zeros out and formats the drive.

[Zorb]

So throw the drive in the garbage and buy another. A 160GB drive is about $45 now.

[Hawke]

So there's NOTHING I can do? (Still have to try the hddunlock thing. been too lazy... )

[falther]

I realy dont understand why people asking for advice dont believe it, when
they get the appropriate advice.

You even got the advice of "THE PRO" maysoft here !

Either you contact http://hddunlock.com

or you let your hdd unlock from a DR pro "around the corner" in your area.

If both is to expensive or you are too lazy to try it - then forget it.

+++

[Hawke]

Sorry. Didn't mean to offend. N00b here.

[drc]

No problem... We just see so many cases where people are luckier than they will ever know that their data was still in a retrievable condition that it boggles the mind when people want to store data on a known dodgy drive on purpose when new ones are so inexpensive.

[cheadledatarecovery]

Hard disk drives can be unlocked easily using PC3000 or Salvation data products. It is unlikely an end user will be able to unlock a disk with out specialist products.
Best wishes,
John



Dr. John C. Reid
Cheadle Data Recovery
Manchester ICT Consultancy
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/