Locked hard drive?

[Swanny]

Hello all,

I encountered a customer's hard drive today that was "locked". I didn't even know this is possible, but it's a standard in the ATA spec. Anyway, I can't do anything to the drive. WD Diagnostics gives error code 0220, The Drive is Locked. I called WD and they said there's know way to un-do it, that you have to use the original program and password. Of course, the customer has no idea what could have done it.

So, is there any way to unlock this thing or is it pretty much dead?


Thanks,
Swan

 

[DannyBoy]

Format.

 

[bigboxes]

Issue:

How to lock / unlock the hard disk drive.

Cause:

A hard disk drive may be come locked or unlocked allowing or not allowing for software to have direct disk access. You may encounter an error indicating to unlock the hard disk drive in any of the following circumstances:

Attempting to install another operating system.
Attempting to fdisk the hard drive.
Installing software
Solutions:

To unlock the hard disk drive

unlock x:

The x represents the letter of the hard disk drive that you wish to unlock. For example if you needed to unlock the C: drive type c in the place of x.

 

[Swanny]

Unfortunatly I cannot format with the lock in place. The unlock command doesn't work either.


Swan

 

[imported_theEman]

I'd try using ConfigMagic. This utility allows you to lock HDDs for Xboxs with upgraded HDDs and I'm sure it should let you unlock them too.

 

[Maverick]

I think thats the culprit right there...your customer used an Xbox to lock the hard drive.

The only way to unlock it is to get the eeprom code off that xbox and use it to unlock the drive. Without that its completely worthless.

 

[Antisocial Virge]

Yeap. I have a 120 gig paperweight due to the exact same thing.

 

[Carbonadium4]

I had a 60 gb notebook drive that is also a paper weight.. can't seem to unlock it since it asks for pwd during post, before bios even comes up.. which totally sucked.. first time encountering this.. i put the hdd back on the original pc, put a password on it and that didn't work.. dont know what else to try since I can't even get into windows with it inserted

 

[mikecel79]

If it has the ATA lock in place your SOL. Unless you know that password you won't be able to get into it. I had a user at work put a password on his HD and then forget it. I was never able to get into it.

 

[Pandamonium]

If is the ATA lock, try contacting the HDD manufacturer's support lines- most manufacturers have backdoor passwords for situations like this.

 

[RobCur]

Originally posted by: mikecel79
If it has the ATA lock in place your SOL. Unless you know that password you won't be able to get into it. I had a user at work put a password on his HD and then forget it. I was never able to get into it.

What kind of moron would password something and forgets it afterward??? duhh :roll:

 

[Swanny]

Originally posted by: RobCur

Originally posted by: mikecel79
If it has the ATA lock in place your SOL. Unless you know that password you won't be able to get into it. I had a user at work put a password on his HD and then forget it. I was never able to get into it.

What kind of moron would password something and forgets it afterward??? duhh :roll:

I think in my case it was more the work of a virus. Is this possible?

 

[NeoPTLD]

Originally posted by: Pandamonium
If is the ATA lock, try contacting the HDD manufacturer's support lines- most manufacturers have backdoor passwords for situations like this.

The whole purpose is to prevent unauthorized use of the drive period. If it was stolen and they gave out the code to a thief in disguise as a troubled customer, what good does that do? It would be like car manufactures giving out the master key code for vehicles with electronic keypad entry for every "i locked my key inside the car and I don't remember the code" stories.

Swanny, I don't believe this is something you can get out of with formatting trickery. The password is most likely programmed on the on-board flash ROM. The serial # you can electronically read out is stored in flash ROM too. That's the only logical way of economically implementing a unique number into each drive electronically.

 

[Zucarita9000]

This might help.

 

[Carbonadium4]

Originally posted by: Zucarita9000
This might help.

whao.. 399.. this is good if u need to recover.. else, like me, i was just looking to wipe out old drive and reuse in different computer.. at least you know theres something you can use

 

[mikecel79]

Originally posted by: RobCur

Originally posted by: mikecel79
If it has the ATA lock in place your SOL. Unless you know that password you won't be able to get into it. I had a user at work put a password on his HD and then forget it. I was never able to get into it.

What kind of moron would password something and forgets it afterward??? duhh :roll:

Happens all the time. User's password protect PST files, Word files, etc and then forget the password. They don't like it when we tell them they are SOL. Usually that's the last time they do that too.

 

[Carbonadium4]

Actually my isn't pwd protected on the system it came with, but if you plug the hdd into another computer, it ask for pwd.. on HP's website, it says please call tech support

so not all people put pwd on their system, its there default

 

[NleahciM]

Hi - there is a method that works if you locked it and no longer know the password. I quote from this page:http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=169278:

1. Get a Windows XP (2000 should work) machine. Turn it off. Take your locked drive, and plug the power into it, but not IDE.
2. Turn it on and boot normally. After booting, plug the IDE into the locked drive. It's OK, it won't break anything.
3. Go into device manager and make it search for new devices. If it doesn't find one, keep trying, until it finds your locked drive.
4. Run LiveInfo (google for it). It will tell you some stuff about EEPROMs, but what we want is the hard disk information. Pick the locked drive from the drop-down box. It'll tell you the password.
5. Print it out, then go into DOS and run HDUNLOCK. Enter the password correctly. Then run HDDISABL, and enter the same password. Et voila.

Some of those tools are available here: http://www.xbox-scene.com/tools/tools.php?page=harddrive. You will have to google for LiveInfo though.

Hope this helps!

 

[Blueopticalmouse]

Hey everybody, I work with Swanny and have taken over this project. NleahciM I have tried doing what you described but as soon as I plug in the IDE my XP Pro machine freezes, I've tried with the drive in both master and slave configurations. Is their a trick to get XP to do this. Thanks for your help.

 

[NleahciM]

Originally posted by: Blueopticalmouse
Hey everybody, I work with Swanny and have taken over this project. NleahciM I have tried doing what you described but as soon as I plug in the IDE my XP Pro machine freezes, I've tried with the drive in both master and slave configurations. Is their a trick to get XP to do this. Thanks for your help.

Unfortunately - I've never done this before. There was a time when I almost had to do it (you might noticed I started the thread I linked to), but then things went another direction and I didn't have to. So I have no experience with this, unfortunately.

Though I have messed around with plugging in IDE drives into computers already running - and honestly I've never had a problem with it. I'd reccomend trying a different system. Good luck!

 

[AnotherPCGuy]

I pulled this from another forum thread and thought that it might help you - in my case it appears that someone changed the default master password and that doesnt help me at all. Try this web site and the tools - http://rockbox.haxx.se/lock.html

The atapwd.exe file is very helpful - shows what you need to do, but assumes a few things (like the master password) it would seem in some cases this password is blank. I have tried a lot of things including contacting (in my case Hitachi) and they aren't generally much help. If someone else can come up with any other thoughts or can somehow acquire the master passwords for all the hard drive manufacturers it would be helpful!

 

[wfbberzerker]

fdisk?