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ATA Password, hard drive locked

InfidelInfidel HereticRegistered User regular
edited June 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
I have a Toshiba laptop hard drive that has a master password set on it that is lost to eternity.

The security setting is HIGH not MAX, so in theory it can be back doored. We've tried a lot of different utilities and methods but so far no luck on unlocking the damn thing.

Don't care about the data, I just want to format and make the drive usable again.

Anyone know the tool that solve this, preferably not hardware that costs tens of thousands of dollars. :D

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    MadpandaMadpanda suburbs west of chicagoRegistered User regular
    edited June 2009
    What part of the boot sequence does the protection kick in at? Can you boot to a live linux cd and wipe the partition/drive?

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    InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Madpanda wrote: »
    What part of the boot sequence does the protection kick in at? Can you boot to a live linux cd and wipe the partition/drive?

    Negative, the ATA password feature is on the physical drive. If you try to just hook it up to a bench machine without entering the unlock password the drive will refuse read/write operations. So just zeroing out the drive is not possible, we tried about a dozen tools so far to get around this but nothing has worked thus far.

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    MadpandaMadpanda suburbs west of chicagoRegistered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Is going through Toshiba support possible?

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    InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Going through a manufacturer would get the job done, at a greater expense than just purchasing a new drive replacement unfortunately, so it's not a practical option.

    We'd also like to be able to address this in the future so we're looking for a long term solution as well for this.

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    1ddqd1ddqd Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Infidel wrote: »
    Going through a manufacturer would get the job done, at a greater expense than just purchasing a new drive replacement unfortunately, so it's not a practical option.

    We'd also like to be able to address this in the future so we're looking for a long term solution as well for this.

    When I was working at Geek Squad, there was no known fix other than sending it in to Toshiba. Let me check if they have a fix for it yet.

    In the meantime, this looks promising: http://www.hddunlock.com/

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Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum