Acer HDD Password Protection - unable to format

[gboy]

hi.

I have a Hitachi 40gb notebook harddrive witch i got from my stuffed acer laptop.

I wish to use it as a external hardrive. i have to enclosure ect. I have discovered that the drive is password protected. (dont ask me why). when i put in to another laptop to try and format it. the message. "password protected fixed disk 0" or something. I am unable to format it, I tried all the FDisk programes on the "ultimate boot cd" as well as the low level format software avalible form Hitachi. they all tell me the "disk is password protected" Windows installation, ect tells me the disk is unreadable.

Please could some one tell me how to bypass this.

No i do not know the password, and no i did not set one that i know of.

I do not need anything on the drive.

Thanks

 

[|tera|]

You should never low level format a hard drive under any circumstance, you could erase the Sector information and the drive could become unusable

What I can find from googling is that the E-lock, or E-secure (can't remember now) utility puts the HD password on.

You have to put it back in a acer notebook and add a blank password to remove the protection, but then again, you have to know the password.

Otherwise, give these guys a shout:

http://www.nortek.on.ca/Password Removal/PasswordRemoval.aspx

 

[mh348]

http://www.hdd.profesjonalnie.pl/to.php according to this website you need some hardware along with software to remove the password, although it's quite expensive. 55 to 145 euros

 

[mh348]

just google this "harddrive password removal tools"

 

[werner]

the password is stored on the hdd circuit (similar to an eprom)

forget about removing it yourself. unless the data is worth it, it will be chaeper just to buy another drive.

 

[Brawler]

that really sucks.

 

[supersunbird]

Notebook companies suck ass...

 

[gboy]

that sucks,

I down loaded the acer -e security tool every thing. bugger all.

but thanks for your help. o well no 40gb flash drive

damn.

 

[bekdik]

Have you tried contacting Acer?

 

[ghalied]

check the bios disk write protection, at times it's enabled with a password, if it prompts for one, resettng the bios might just be it, had this problem on a couple of Dell lappies.

 

[Deee]

Notebook companies suck ass...

i have a brand new AM2 board if u still looking