ATA password

[JAGedlion]

A friend of mine has an HP laptop that just won't behave. Though the BIOS recognizes the hard drive, I cannot see any partitions. Similarly, when I run an NTFS reader or really just about everything on the EBCD (emergency boot cd, its deffinetly a reccomended download, lots of very helpful tools) all I see is a small unpartitioned space and that is all.
When I run IBM diagnostics it says that the hard drive is locked with a password set on high security.
Of course the person who owns the computer has no idea what password there is and claims there never was one. I am inclined to belive her as the BIOS was also password protected and its pretty hard not to realize that though flashing the BIOS took care of that problem.
Now I'm stuck though and absolutely cannot figure out what to do about this hard drive password.
I have been looking online a ton and I can't find any ways to fix it, only people saying it can't really be done by the user, but of course since anandtech is awsome, perhaps one of you might consider performing a miracle.

edit: Probably should've mentioned it is a hitachi drive

 

[FlyingPenguin]

IBM Thinkpads are VERY high security. There are 3 passwords that can be set. BIOS (can be disabled by resetting CMOS), Admin (can't be reset), Hard Drive (can't be reset).

Only way to unlock an Admin or Hard Drive password is send it to IBM or a service that specializes in this, and it will cost a LOT (several hundred dollars).

I would assume that the person who owns it either bought a stolen laptop, or has an irate girl friend he just broke up with that maliciously set his hard drive password (I see this all the time).

Bottom line: You need the password or the drive is scrap. It sounds like the admin password isn't set since you can POST the laptop and run utilities on it (if the admin was locked the mobo would be scrap). I'm fairly certain that you can pop another HDD in there and it'll work just fine (not 100% certain though).

This is why Thinkpads cost so much, and why corporations buy them.

 

[JAGedlion]

its an HP laptop, its a hitachi Hard drive, hitachi is part of IBM, therefore hard drive diagnostics are available from IBM but I do agree that it sounds like the only alternative it seems is to replace the drive, I'll continue tinkering, just wanted to make sure the next viewers don't misinterpret the situation

I think it was caused by a virus btw, not really sure at all, dfferent people (I'm the third guy this girls brought her lappy too) keep telling me differnt things, one guy says for example that he could doo most things until he booted with a norton cd and it reported that there was no partition (0 files) (not unpartitioned space) which every subsequent program also says. Is there some sort of default hp password to keep people from screwing stuff up too badly? Or any random thing a person that fiddled too much might have accidentally done to cause this (like anything, she also brought it to the schools computer guys and I have about as much faith in them as just putting a magnet to the drive)?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Hmm, sorry misread your post. I've never heard of this feature on an HP, but it's possible if it's a high end business lappy.

However the HDD password feature IS a feature of the IBM hard drive itself, because once one of those drives are locked you can't access the data even if you move the drive to another computer. So it's not a BIOS password, it really is the drive itself that's locked.

Maybe the drive became corrupted and it accidently enabled the password feature (just theorizing wildly here) or it's just totally corrupt and the diagnostic THINKS the password feature is enabled.

I assume there's data on the drive you'd like to salvage, but I'm not sure if you can. Have you tried running any data recovery apps on it?

I'm not aware of any inexpensive way to beat the password protection. You generally have to send it in and it will cost more than a new drive.

 

[JAGedlion]

actually I gave up on trying to recover the data, after all the semester is ending and I really don't care about her pirated music collection. I'll keep plugging away with different apps but in general I think the HDD will need to be replaced, but she is determined to bring it to a professional (read: someone who will charge her alot even if he has no idea what he's doing) before she will replace the part.

 

[RichUK]

maybe but i dont know, would it be possibile to take the platters out of the HDD and put it in a identical HDD, or is the password saved to the platters... i have not heard of this HDD password before but im kind of thinking it might be saved to a chip on the HDD itself although i might be wrong ... its crazy but it might work