I have a Thinkpad that has the hard disk password set. How do I reset it? Apparently, its ON the hard drive somewhere (refer to http://www.onlink.net/nortek/hdd_pw.html#HDD).. How can I remove this? I've done all the usual (remove battery, etc) to no avail.. ????????????????
In the Thinkpad manual it says you can reverse a user password that you forgot. You can reverse a BIOS password you forgot but if you forgot a hd password you are up a creek without a paddle.
Ethan
Hows that for post 101?
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took it all from them." - Edward Filene
Bob, how do you figure hdparm would show the password? -I? That just displays model, version, revision and some geometry related statistics by querying the drive's firmware. It's not going to show something like a password string that's been hidden in an area that inaccessable by normal means. (which wouldn't likely be plain text anyway). -L? (doorlock flag) That's just for certain removable drives so the cartridge can be ejected if it doesn't get properly unmounted. Just wondering which option you're thinking of here when you said that (or did you read something that led you to believe hdparm could help with this?)
You might be able to do a raw copy using dd, and output it to a file or another device for data recovery purposes. If you could hook up the laptop hard drive in a machine where you could access it from Linux and dump it to another media.
Essentially what the data recovery service is somehow doing is, a raw copy to some intermediate form where they can edit, then a raw copy back again.
If one knew what one was doing, one could probably use a low level disk editor like Norton Diskedit, or the debug.exe utility to reset or remove it, if one could find a way to access the disk.
I wouldn't have a clue which sectors to edit, so I am excluded from such a solution.
Working on laptops for a living like I do, my experience has taught me that once you created a HDD pw, it is stored on the HDC, not in the data area. I know for a fact that if you do that with a Toshiba, and forget your PW, your HDD is then worthless since there is no way to remove it. Oh, and Toshiba uses IBM, Toshiba, and Hitachi drives, and it is the same for all three. Sorry man but you had better start gettin qoutes on a new HDD.
Doesn't have to be in the data area... the key words are "low level editor" and "raw copy". Just because you and I don't have the savvy to do it doesn't mean it can't be done.
If you read the link in the original post, you will see that it indeed can be circumvented.
who knows...their "proprietary method" could be nothing more than swapping the HDC from one hard drive to another.
QUOTE:
Resides on the Hard Disk itself, in an area not accessible by the user or the system.
END QUOTE.
this is not saying that the HDD pw exists on the platters, merely on the HDD. I even checked with the service manager here, who has over 10 years exp. in laptops. Everything we've ever seen about HDD PW's says they are stored on the HDC.
