My laptop hard drive has been "locked". Well, I do not know if the terminology is correct, but upon booting it asks for HDD Password which I have no idea what might be. The laptop is an Acer Travelmate 663 and the Hard drive is a 40Gb Seagete ST94011A.

I was recommended to try MHDD and as I see from the documentation it has the ability to unlock the hard drive (by using the commands UNLOCK and DISPWD). I have not tried anything yet, because I still have an elementary question. Assuming that everything goes fine, will my data survive, or the procedure will erase them? I do not care at all about the disk (which I have already replaced), but just for my data.

Thanks.

MHDD can only unlock if u know password.

To unlock without p/w needs PC3000 or Salvation.

Where are u based?

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PC Image Data Recovery
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To know which password? Not the HDD I guess, if I knew it I would not need any utility to unlock. I guess you mean the Master Password as written in the documentation of MHDD. I did not know it, but there is a utility, found in the internet, which is called mastid, and allows one to find the Master Password from the MasterID (appears in the security column of the BIOS).

However I tried all that, but it did not work. MHDD sees the drive as locked by an ATA Password, however I cannot unlock it, neither with a Master Password nor with a User Password.

I am in Italy.

I do mean the HDD password.

Alternatively you could try AFF repair station.

It's free to diagnose and last time I looked, and unlock was about $40.

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PC Image Data Recovery
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New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

AFF does not (and will not) support Seagate 2.5" drives.

pcuser... yes, you are correct.

I've never had to use AFF myself, I use PC3000 or Salvation.

I must say that I found Salvation easier to use for unlocking Seagate Momentus.

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

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

Anyhow, I cannot buy salvation or PC3000 to unlock a single drive. As said in the first post, I want just the data. Does anybody, who has the software and the hardware to do the job, live in a reasonable distance from Trento, Italy? If yes, I could bring the drive in person.

Which country r u from ?
DF

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DF
www.datatracksystem.net

try them:
http://www.ultrarecovery.com

regards,
pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

pcuser,

Hi, i read your post and i am interested by the program mastid.exe, but i don't find in any place, can you helpme send it please?

My email is murilladas@gmail.com

Thanks!

Sorry my english es very poor i am spanish sorry