Hello I have a Hitachi Travelstar 60GB ATA/IDE which appears to have "locked itself" now I am a noob when it comes to data recovery, so from reading the many threads here I am suffering from information overload as I am unsure what is pertinent.

From what I have read the drive locking itself is a symptom of a failing harddrive, but I would like to recover some photo files if possible (this is a wish of the previous owner)

I have had limited experience with XBHDM, so I thought I had a chance of unlocking it. (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing )
I attempted to use MHDD from usb to unlock the drive but I really don't know what I'm doing.
What options do I have for data recovery and what threads/ programs should I be looking at

Dell Latitude E610
Service tag 5BVJ52J

Hitachi Travelstar 60GB
Model HTS721060G9AT00(zero,zero)
S/N MPC3B2Y3GG3(zero)BE

Hard-disk #3B2Y3GG0(zero)BE-595B the system Primary HDD is protected by a password authentication system. You can not access data on this hard drive without the correct password.

Many thanks in advance.

If a drive has "locked itself" then that is a symptom of a different underlying problem, which needs to be diagnosed & fixed - the real problem is not that the drive is locked.

I suggest you tell the owner of the drive that there is no sensible DIY option, and he should use the services of a DR professional (e.g. PC Image in Peterborough - member pcimage on this forum), if he wants to recover data from the drive.

+1 for pcimage
He knows what he is doing and it should not be too expensive at this stage.

Rgds

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www.datasave.ro

Assuming things are really like that, it's not DIY.

But if the drive didn't lock itself but was somehow locked by accident....maybe the kids were playing with it and accidentlly set a hard drive password? The owner wouldn't know and the drive might appear as having locked itself. In such a case there would be a far easier method to unlock the drive.

No, from the history I have been told there was no act of child, the laptop was shutdown improperly and then the drive locked itself.
I was hoping that I could swap/read or flash/blank the epprom which holds the key or something like that.

I understand that this fault is a symptom of a failing drive

I have had a little experience removing files from a drive which had its MBR table corrupted (it totally failed about 2 weeks later). and unlocking xbox HDDs with hotswapping.

As I said before, based on your story, your problem is not simply that the drive is locked and needs to be unlocked. That is a symptom of a bigger / different (likely firmware-related) problem, which must be correctly diagnosed and resolved.

In case you were going to ask, no, this would not be fixed by "upgrading the firmware" - (a) upgrading the firmware, and (b) fixing firmware-related corruption, are completely different procedures.

Here it seems the dilemma....is the drive locked with a password or does it have another type of fault? The original poster is convinced or has already decided the hard drive has another type of fault.

I would be interested to see the drive security status in Mhdd or Victoria.

This is a common problem of hitachi traverlstar models.

There are firmware copies A and B, which also will be locked and no action on this copies is possible at this state.
You have get into the Safemode of the HDD by accessing its NVRAM and then copy the factory copy of the Firmware which Firmware C.

You will find a module with name PWD in most cases. Copy this and in safe mode itself, copy it to Firmware A.
Now change the disk to normal mode..

There you go..

Oh sorry to tell you.. It can be done only professionally using advanced recovery tools...
Contact any data recovery Lab

Try this master pass: veihgn9j
Problem is , your laptop locked your drive, coz it is Dell D610 .

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Angel Data Recovery

I was hoping that was the case, The password you provided did not work but I mistyped the hard disk service tag number,
Hard-disk service tag: 3B2Y3GG30(zero)BE-595B

In this case try this password for hdd:
kt9x5gia

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Angel Data Recovery

Hello again after an extended absence,

The password provided above did not work, as I do not have the machine in front of me I can not tell if it was my error, could I ask how are you generating these passwords? and could you provide a link to the program please

Once again many thanks in advance