Uncreative Labs

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I was going thru a batch of old hard drives
this one came from some kind of TV box.
when set as a boot drive it has a bloack with a KEY and wants me to enter a password
when I put it on a secondary controller it is not detected
when I attempt to boot fro0m a floppy or cd, I still get the drivelock thing
no msatter how many times I try I cannot get into cmos or "boot order" to boot from something else
THIS IS NOT a cmos or BIOS thing
it is on this particular drive
HOW ndo i get rid of it?
I do not want the dasts just to erase and format the seagate 3.5" ide drive.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

hmm, you try some hiren tools? cant remember off hand wich ones, but there was some that could erase hard drive passwords, like on ibm laptops. mabey a usb to ide adaptor?

Joined: 10 May 2008 Posts: 62

wdegroot wrote:

I was going thru a batch of old hard drives
this one came from some kind of TV box.
when set as a boot drive it has a bloack with a KEY and wants me to enter a password
when I put it on a secondary controller it is not detected
when I attempt to boot fro0m a floppy or cd, I still get the drivelock thing
no msatter how many times I try I cannot get into cmos or "boot order" to boot from something else
THIS IS NOT a cmos or BIOS thing
it is on this particular drive
HOW ndo i get rid of it?
I do not want the dasts just to erase and format the seagate 3.5" ide drive.

I'm thinking the password lock is a BIOS thing on the hard disk logic board (not the BIOS on the computer's motherboard). If you can get the drive into a machine that will let you boot off cd, download and burn a copy of the latest Hiren's Boot CD.. It has some utils on there that can kill the password / block on a hard drive's bios.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I had hiren as a first thought
I could not boot from a floppy or from a cd
had a hiren's cd in the drive
NO MATTER what the expectation of if I keep hitting F9
for the boot menu with a bootable floppy in A
all I get is that dratted "drivelock"
this is a seagate 3.5" ide drive.

I tried to fix an IBM lasptop drive a few months ago with a similar problem NO LUCK THERE either.

but the system works fine with the REGULAR drives
I unplug all me real everyday drive when I am doing this sort of thing
ONE MORE: when the drive is connected to a promise controller it is not detected.
but the bios detects it when it is connected to the main mb cables and DRATTED DRIVELOCK.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

There is no way to unlock a HD without the correct password, it is a brick.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

unless you have a logic board out of a similar one, my old shop had 100's of dead drives from 40mb to 500gb, kept for there login boards

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Maybe if you had the exact model board with the exact firmware. Or have special equipment to read sectors directly. For 99.999999999999% of people it is a brick.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

just wondering, what size is the drive? see if its realy worth the effort

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

it is a small drive a 10gb
it is just a experiment to see IF I can make it work