HDD LOCKED.

thats odd, i never SET a password on the drive. its already being serviced under warranty, just thought i'd pose it here as an interesting question.

since it was changable in bios, i flased the cmos, that didnt help. then i flash updated the bios, that didnt help either

since the thing is still under warranty and theres supposedly a history of shitty hard drives with it (sata wd), i sent it back the other day.

they're either gonna replace the drive or reimage it or something i guess, but im wondering what you guys think that was? seems like i caught bad data right where the on/off flag for drive password was stored

i was also a little curious since it seemed that it only fucked with my ability to use that drive, and not my actual system. i used a slackware linux boot disk and eventually found the disk under linux fdisk. i also burned a copy of that ultimate boot disk and looked at some of the programs on there. thats when i decided to mail the computer off, before i fucked my warranty up

drive error in exactly the right spot? anyone heard of anything like it (ive already read all of the internet, please none of those stories thx)

10/11/2007 11:10:10 AM

I thought that data was stored on the rom of the disk, not the platters.

10/11/2007 11:18:30 AM

if youre talking about drive passwords and other stuff that should be accessible (in unlocked mode) through an [s]ATAinfo type program, then i think i see where youre coming from and it doesnt make sense to me either. but by the time i got done trying to figure this out, i was sure that space aliens just set the password in my sleep, cause ive never heard of a miswrite setting a LOCKED or a PROTECTED flag or anything.,..

but FOR REAL i got totally confused about this whole situation. i've had a computer since forever... had a trs80, pcjr, through 286, 386 pre mathco, got my dx50 with taco bell money... all the way up through p1, p2, p4. but in all that time, at any level, i've never had a notebook, and i've never done anything to one besides install software or network adapters.

and ive always been able to reset system passwords by jumpering this or short circuiting that. but i dont want to look for jumpers or try to hotswap drives at different times while it can still cost me a lot of money

i'll learn a lot more about laptops when my warranty runs out. until then, i resist all temptation to unscrew the screws.

[Edited on October 11, 2007 at 11:37 AM. Reason : `]

10/11/2007 11:35:50 AM

Check out this thread, in particular, the post 3 from the bottom ... try the qunlock program, I can't make any guarantees about anything though.

http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic33589-30.html

10/11/2007 11:49:07 AM

appreciate the help but i guess you didnt read all my rantings -- (i sent it in already)

thats one of the things that we can discuss, though. the fact that programs like that (and "legit" programs like fdisk, data lifeguard, gwscan, etc etc etc) won't work because the drive is "locked" -- essentially EXIST ONLY. no READ/no WRITE

10/11/2007 12:30:30 PM

there was no way to get the computer to boot to any other media without locking the hard disk. it would always ask for the password during the POST, so by the time it would actually boot, the drive would be fucked (either flagged as "LOCKED" to WDC software, or as "unavailable" to most anything windows related).

i'd never heard of hard drive password protection that was totally unrelated to system boot protection with an admin/user PW through BIOS. is it because of all the government laptops with millions of SSNs in them that the employee borrows for the weekend that end up getting stolen?

10/11/2007 12:55:41 PM

modify the fstab next time

hdd passwords, i remember them on the 386 that i had...ive never used one

[Edited on October 11, 2007 at 12:58 PM. Reason : 

10/11/2007 12:57:29 PM

i finally loaded it by calling sata,i bla bla bla, finally found it under /dev/sda (/mnt HA) and my cd drive under /dev/hda (/cdrom SUPER HA) (but i could never read or write any info)

oh i played with fstab and mtab, all sorts of bootchecks and etc etc

but still by that time it had asked for drive PW 3 times and locked it @ POST, so it was unwilling to let me do any kind of writing it

i'd never seen these passwords before. maybe i'll find one of my desktops that supports it and then i can play with it more and tear shit apart without having to worry about costing myself a warranty


[Edited on October 11, 2007 at 1:43 PM. Reason : ]]

10/11/2007 1:39:48 PM

fuck it, gateway sent it back with a reimaged HDD 3 days later

too bad they forgot to reimage the recovery partition and my "d drive" shows up as "unformatted" - i called them and demanded a fix and refused to send it back. she said i'd get some dvds in a week and not to save anything i particularly wanted cause i was gonna have to do a factory image on the hard drive again and i'd lose everything

so it looks like i'll get the tools afterall

10/13/2007 11:25:12 PM