Hard drive password?

J

jkoXP

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Someone gave me a laptop HDD, and when I boot up with it, it says there's a password. I have no idea what it is, neither does the other person. How do I get around this???
 
Put your operating system cd of choice into the laptop and boot from it. Then format the disk, this wil over write the master boot record and should remove the password. Simplest way to do it.
 
Why would someone give you a password protected HD and not know the password??? Are you sure it was theirs to give? Without sounding like a drama queen....if its been stolen you are in posession. You will get done!
 
Don't ask about passwords here or Enyo will ***** at you.
 
Are you sure that it isn't your BIOS asking you for a password to add hardware or to enter it to set it up?
 
If it is an IBM laptop you should read this...

http://www.driverforum.com/harddrive3/1544.html

I've heard that some laptops can have a drive lock password and a power-on password in addition to the BIOS password, I hope this is not the case here. Considering it is most likely a bios password I'm going to give you a couple of basic suggestions. First contact the manufacturer and see if you can get a list of backdoor passwords. Second option is to remove the CMOS battery and hope that the password resets itself to blank.

If you have the ability to do so (and you're running windows) you can make a boot disk on any win95 or newer system and boot the laptop to it, regardless of what version is running on the laptop. from there you could do a harddrive debug and reformat too. that should hopefully work.
 
I know it's not a BIOS password or Power on password. Because if I put a diff HDD into the laptop it boots right up. I have tried booting to a startup disk, but it won't be recognized unless I type the correct password for the HDD.


The Laptop is mine, but the HDD was given to me.
 
Like what was said before , boot up from a floppy and format it thats all , not like you need to know what was there, you just want the extra space I would think :)
 
Look up (search for) the make and model of the HDD, maybe there is a jumper on the drive that you can set or remove to reset or remove the HDD password.

Also why don't you tell us the make and model of the HDD and maybe we can find some info on it.
 
I wonder if something like partition magic would not be able to simply delete the partion from the boot up disks , or even in windows ? or how about win98 boot up disk and F disk? delete the partition?
 
I had a thought :eek: :p

If you are reeeeeally desperate to format this HDD, stick it in an external HDD enclosure, plug it into the laptop (with another HDD to boot from, of course :p) and see if the OS will pick up the HDD. Then use Partition Magic to reformat.

Now this is very weird thinking here. But something alone these lines might work for you... experement... use your imagination. :p
 
Originally posted by gonaads
I had a thought :eek: :p

If you are reeeeeally desperate to format this HDD, stick it in an external HDD enclosure, plug it into the laptop (with another HDD to boot from, of course :p) and see if the OS will pick up the HDD. Then use Partition Magic to reformat.

Now this is very weird thinking here. But something alone these lines might work for you... experement... use your imagination. :p

Tried that. no go.

No matter how you have it hooked up, when the BIOS tries to check the HDD it can't with out the password.

I'll get the model tonight
 
Here's another though...

Why not plug the HDD into a desktop PC, one with XP on it, as a second HDD? Then format it from there. :confused:
 
I thought that was what he would have tried in the first place just slap it in as a slave and use partition magic or something and just delete the partition ... would find it very odd indeed that a hard-drive could not be hooked up this way without that password blocking it, How would you set a password that can show up in the bios, stopping you from hooking a HD as a slave? I have never heard of such a thing, of course anything might be possible but wow thats some damn good security if it can stop you from deleting a partion on a slave and have it show up in bios :eek:
 

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