I am not sure if anyone here is familiar with drivelock; it is a feature on notebooks that lock the hard drive using a encrypted password that is saved on an eeprom on the motherboard and not only the hard drive. If you pull the hard drive out of the notebook to unlock it using normal ATA password techniques you will be unsuccessful.

A problem I am having is being able to tell if the drive is actually drivelocked. I have recently gotten two seperate cases that are seagate hard drives. Both are having trouble initializing. I managed to get them both to initialize temporarily but only for a short period of time.

here is the information of the drives

drive 1: Seagate momentus 7200.2 80GB
model:ST980813ASG
PN:9S5232-030
FW: 3.ADD
Date: 08332
Site: WU

drive 2: Seagate momentus 5400.4 160GB
Model: ST9160827AS
PN:9DG133-188
FW: 3.AAA
Date: 08273
Site: WU



drive one was actually sent w/ the notebook which was a Dell latitude D630. When you boot the notebook with the drive it tells you the drive is locked w/ admin password.



Basically my question is: If the drive is not initializing is that a symptom of drivelock in any way? Or is the drive actually failing.

I believe that the drives are failing, but the fact that I got two seperate cases that where supposedly just locked drives, and both are fairly new seagate drives that where probably in notebooks w/drivelock. Makes me wonder if they are both drive locked, and thats why they are exhibiting the same exact symptoms.

does anyone know how to confirm if a drive is "drivelocked" for certain? Because I would hate to perform physical work on these drives only to have them be drivelocked and unable to be recovered.

better to contact Dell Support to have better commitment

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SHAHI
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Hi, Drivelock is just for the contents on the drive so you should be able to init the drive and read FW and so.
If you have like Pc3000 or simular...

Best Regards
Bosse

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HD Doctor For Seagate works fine to unlock drives with ease.
but the dell machine will lock the drive again as stated by Russwinters

_________________
__________
There is no substitute for education and experience
THANK YOU
SHAHI
shahi.mahbub@gmail.com

Shahij is right . A locked drive will init regularly but every attempt to read or write LBA will lead to ABRT. You can easily figure it out locking a drive with ATA password with MHDD, turn power off then on , the drive is locked.... try a simple SCAN and you'll get !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! , but a EID or recalibrate attempt will work. Problems with the SA , especially with security subsystem, lead to same symptoms : fix the SA and the symptom will disappear.

alright; after your posts, and reading up some more I fully understand drivelock now.


On to the next part of the problem.


I managed to get them to fully initialize, and they are in fact locked.
From my understanding these new seagate use a different bit rate then older drives; which means some hardware that only read the drives that run at 9600 will not work.


what is the best way to unlock these drives that use the newer bit rate on the serial port? i think its like ~15000 not sure of the exact number.

can anyone confirm that these drives communicate with different parameters then older seagate drives? My understanding is that sometime in 2007? (just a guess) they changed the rate from 9600 to somewhere in the 15,000s.


I'm asking because i am only getting ?[][][][]?[][][] from the terminal running at the standard 9600

Just a suggestion.. Increase the baud rate until you find a
rate that will work

Mate ,
There Are softwares That Make USe of simple Hardqware that Has to Be attached to The Drive ,this Will Read the TPM Chip in the laptop and then you could get the password out ,So any new drives you put inside will have the passwod problem solved for removing the password out of the hdd use pc3k and salvation

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Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com