saltfish

Just about one year ago, when I purchased my laptop I placed a BIOS password to prevent other users from chaning important information.

Yeah, that was a great idea, I know.

So, here we are 11 months later, and I run across a utility that will trash the CMOS so that the password is removed. It worked like a charm.

But...

What I didn't know, going into this, is that the cmos password was mirrored onto the harddrive as a 'drivelock' password. Having the CMOS trashed and rebuilt invalidates the password that is stored thereon. So, I flash the BIOS via a boot-cd of my own creation and boom, there is no longer a partition error; now I'm being asked for a drivelock password. This was, once again, apparently set when I set the BIOS password some 11 months ago.

I have contaced Compaq, and they are amazed that I have figured this all out on my own. They also told me that I could NEVER get my BIOS to flash via a CD, (heh!). That's another story. So, they don't know where to get a drivelock master password. So I contacted the MFG of the drive, Hitachi, and they will under no circumstances give out the password.
BUT!!!
They happen to know a company that will remove the PW, and verify all my data for $300. Yeah, bump that noise.

So, the question that I pose to you.

Does anyone know of any methods to remove or disable a 'drivelock' password for a Hitachi drive? Does anyone have any ideas on how to get ANY data from the drive, short of a raw HEX dump?

Any answers will be greatly accepted.

-SF

JStrider

make a boot disk and do a low level format?... that would do it i think...

doesnt do much for recovering data...

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yotta

DriveLock disables the hard drive's read/write heads in firmware. You can't fix it on your own. That's the point of drivelock. Part of the drive eletrocnics must be replaced, which is why it's so expensive.

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yotta

They admited to having a master password?

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cliche

From alt.2600: (hey, if anyone knows... )

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I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage (1912 - 1992)

Scorpion23

I would have to agree with what everyone else is saying about the firmware. My IBM Thinkpad has a HD locking feature that is separate from the BIOS and any software security I might have.

I don't know about Hitachi, but for my IBM drive the only way to get the data back is either put the platters in another drive or replace all the electronics on the drive. That's probably why that company has a cleanroom.

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saltfish

My thoughts on this whole DriveLock deal:

Is it really necessary to have an option like this on a budget PC? I understand that there are people/companies that have information that would rather be kept private, but for a home/school user, DriveLock seems to be a bit overkill.

From the searching that I've done, more often than not, the drives are locked on accident and can never be unlocked. This is through the fault of the user and not an 'intended' purpose to guard data.

-SF

yotta

It is a good feature. People need to take steps to make sure they don't lose thier passwords. Though, I had a nasty scare with drivelock myself. Set a password, and then it didn't work. Turned out that the interface for setting a password did not allow you to use a \, but the password prompt did.

Anyway, as to drivelock.... I suguest you either use it, or encryption. It will put your mind at ease if your laptop gets stolen.

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