Breaking in to a Harddrive

[Alan Dayley]

If the hardware manufacturer implemented the ATA spec correctly, the
password cannot be bypassed by any normal means.  That is, after all,
what the password is supposed to do.

With special knowledge of the specific hard drive model, not just the
manufacturer, the model and even the specific firmware, one can find
where the password is stored and erase or nullify it.  Oh, and you
might need special equipment to get to that password on the platters.

To put it another way, throw this hard drive away and go buy a new
one.  It'll be less costly of your time.

Alan

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 8:51 AM, James Finstrom
<jfinstrom at rhinoequipment.com> wrote:
> Greetings All,
> So my dad bought a Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 and apparently the drive is
> password locked at a hardware level and requires some sort of voodoo to
> report back anything other than vendor data. Anyway I guess there is a byte
> code you send to the drive and then a password then you live happily ever
> after. Needless to say we don't have the password. I am sure there is data
> on the drive but none that we own so don't care if all data is lost. Looking
> for suggestions on breaking in or clearing the drive. Again total data loss
> is ok.  Tried DD in case it was in the partition table and no dice..
>
> --
> James Finstrom
>
>
>
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