Hi guys,

I have some bigger issues here. I have a Hitachi HTS545050 which was/is locked with an HDD password in a Dell Studio 1555. As I wanted to sell this notebook now I tried to remove the HDD (which was set and known by me).

I tried it with MHDD but my inserted User password failed all time. I tried several times etc. Then I decided to hook that device to an external USB port and plugged it into another system. As this also did not work I inserted the HDD again into the notebook but now it does not even accept the previous/correct password anymore.

HDAT2 also says that the DCO is frozen.

How do I get the device back to work? I dont care (anymore) for the data. I just want to HDD to work again.

If the master password is still at the factory default, then try a secure erase:
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/hughes/SecureErase.html
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I tried the master password (32 spaces) to unlock the drive but it does not work. SecureErase does not recognize the drive at all. I guess its because the drive is locked. DCO state is frozen.

No possibilities?

FYI, your original problem appears to be that your were entering ASCII codes rather than keyboard scan codes.

For an explanation, see unlocking-ata-password-for-western-digital-t8374-240.html

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

@Blocki,

Why did you not remove the password from the disk, using the BIOS of the Dell laptop (since that is where you say you set the password) - without ever removing the disk?

As fzabkar explained, some of your later problems have obvious causes, and using a USB caddy would not work for password removal, in my experience (unless special software is supplied by the USB caddy manufacturer for that purpose, due to USB-SATA bridge chip behaviour).

But to go back to the start of your problem - I don't understand why you didn't simply use the original laptop to remove the password at the start. Please explain. Did you try that at the beginning, before removing the disk from the laptop, and the password was refused?

There was no possibility to remove the password with the Dell Laptop BIOS. That was my main problem and reason why i struggled with all of this.

Edit: But now as the HDD is in frozen state I will be unable to unlock the device with the userpassword, right? If I would still be able to unlock it with the userpassword, how do I enter my password with keyboard scan codes? Your linked WD thread is mainly about dumping some info from WD drives to retrieve an unknown password. In my case the password is/was known (at least the userpassword) but I was not smart enough to insert it properly while trying to remove this password again.

If the data is important enough, I suggest this might be a good time to stop and get it looked at by a pro. If it is still just a simple password issue, the price shouldn't be too much. If it has compounded to something worse, it is better to know now than to make it completely unrecoverable.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

As I said earlier. I basically dont care much about the data. I only want to use this piece of hardware again.

@Blocki,


Unfortunately that doesn't answer the very specific questions which I asked. I suspect there is more to this situation than a simple password issue, but without those answers, I can't start to check my hypothesis, so you might be wasting your (and my) time on this... Therefore I will be brief:


That depends exactly what you mean. The drive cannot be unlocked while it is frozen, but the frozen state is not permanent.


You can investigate HDAT2, which allows hex passwords to be entered easily.

Yes. I tried to remove the password with the Laptop (HDAT2 etc.) directly but I failed. So I tried something else and made it even worse.

So... How can I get rid of the frozen state? I will try to check HDAT2 again later this day or week.

What you can try is to boot fthe Dell laptop from cd/dvd with a usable operating system or from a spare computer with the drive mounted directly to the motherboard. What you would do is connect the power to the password locked drive immediately after bios/manufacurer splash screen has closed and the os boots. Get it right and you should be able to see the drive in Mhdd or Victoria. Also Hdderase if that is what you want to do. Hirens boot disk seems good for this. Of course at your own risk!!!

Getting the disk visible is no problem. Getting the disk unlocked is my main concern.

It seems as i'm wasting words here as I thought I had just explained to you how to get password access to your drive.

Dont get me wrong. I am very thankful for every answer. But my main problem here is really that I am unable to unlock the device with any of the mentioned tools. I am able to get the device visible in this tools but I am simply too stupid to unlock it with this tools.