Hey I locked my Hd with the X3 chip then accedently changed my epprom is there a master password for the x3 to unlock the hd?
X3 HD Lock
- Thread starter gnize
- Start date
dstar2002
Senior Member
im pretty sure the only thing you can do is make the eeprom original, other than that, congrats on your new paperweight.....
wrboyce
Senior Member
wrboyce
Senior Member
threeballspin
VIP Member
There are some tools that will allow you to unlock it. Forget what they are called. Do a search on here. I know I saw a refference to them the other day.
threeballspin
VIP Member
Hate to disagree, but I also have a 160 Gig paperweight and did a ton of research on this over the last week. If you know of anything different, I'd kiss you, and the 4 or 5 companies out there charging $250 USD to unlock your HD would be sad to know their secret program is out.
The Password is actually stored on the ATA HD firmware, and without passing the password, the drive won't respond to a thing.
I believe the tools you're refering to are atapwd and hdunlock(and hddisabl) they require the password. Without the password the HD itself will not unlock or respond to any sort of write request (ie: not even a low level format).
I hope I'm missing something and you can give me the secret to unlocking my drive, but with the chip/mobo this drive was locked on being DEAD I'm basically out of luck unless I want to pay a data recovery company more than the drive is worth to unlock it.
Any insight you have beyond what I've mentioned is coveted!
>>>Michael
The Password is actually stored on the ATA HD firmware, and without passing the password, the drive won't respond to a thing.
I believe the tools you're refering to are atapwd and hdunlock(and hddisabl) they require the password. Without the password the HD itself will not unlock or respond to any sort of write request (ie: not even a low level format).
I hope I'm missing something and you can give me the secret to unlocking my drive, but with the chip/mobo this drive was locked on being DEAD I'm basically out of luck unless I want to pay a data recovery company more than the drive is worth to unlock it.
Any insight you have beyond what I've mentioned is coveted!
>>>Michael
wrboyce
Senior Member
hmmmmm, so whats to stop someone writing a virus that locks all your hard drives with a random key? Scary thought!
Yeah, I was thinking that after the reading I was doing, but then again, what's stopping virus writers from destroying thr partition table, formatting hds or eve 0 writing the FAT. Highly destructive viruses would REALLY start a poostorm of investigation I'm sure.
I think it's a very unknown aspect of the ATA drives. 90% of the reading I did was around laptops that locked the HD for security so that the HD couldn't be put into another Laptop and copied. A few laptops out there have some glitches that have them accidentily write a wrong password under certain circumstance and create a paperweight.
I'm sure if it became a HUGE problem then the unlocking utilities would get developed, but for the 100 or so of us right now... <sigh>
I think it's a very unknown aspect of the ATA drives. 90% of the reading I did was around laptops that locked the HD for security so that the HD couldn't be put into another Laptop and copied. A few laptops out there have some glitches that have them accidentily write a wrong password under certain circumstance and create a paperweight.
I'm sure if it became a HUGE problem then the unlocking utilities would get developed, but for the 100 or so of us right now... <sigh>
wrboyce
Senior Member
yes but data loss isn't quite as significant as data loss AND hardware loss....
How pissed off would you be if your file server got this theoretical virus and your 8x250gb hdd array was wiped out?
How pissed off would you be if your file server got this theoretical virus and your 8x250gb hdd array was wiped out?
wrboyce
Senior Member
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...tware Downloads/ATA Hard Drives&downloadID=22
if its a maxtor drive I think this'll recover it. This could take a looong time (like, overnight maybe)
if its a maxtor drive I think this'll recover it. This could take a looong time (like, overnight maybe)
threeballspin
VIP Member
There has to be something that will run though a library of all possible combinations and find the one that unlocks it. Yes I know that the hd key is about 100,000,000 (exaderation) characters long but it wouldn't hurt.
20 Hex values? Someone with math can correct me, but isn't that 20 to the power of 256, or 20 with 256 0's afterwards? I'm not sure you'd crack that anytime this century.
Oh, and there's a hitch, at least with my HD. If you run atapwd, it shows you a few atributes of the HD you're working with. After 5 attempts to unlock the HD with a password, it hits a limit until the drive is power cycled. The you can try 5 more... reboot... lather... rinse... repeat.
It's not getting cracked with a brute force attack, that's for sure.
Oh, and there's a hitch, at least with my HD. If you run atapwd, it shows you a few atributes of the HD you're working with. After 5 attempts to unlock the HD with a password, it hits a limit until the drive is power cycled. The you can try 5 more... reboot... lather... rinse... repeat.
It's not getting cracked with a brute force attack, that's for sure.
mobomelter
Senior Member
i want to know how you "accidently" changed your eeprom. i mean don't you have to physically go through at least 2 menus to do that?
wrboyce
Senior Member
hmm, brute forcing a HD password would take a few millenia........ Unless... Do you have a Cray?
Hey J0siah,
If you read around, there are a couple methods that will /sometimes/ work for obtaining a password. I had a similar problem with a hosed EEPROM and a locked 200GB WD drive. Using liveinfo2 I was able to get the password, and used hdunlock and hddisabl to unlock it.
PM me if you want any more details than that. If the drive is one of the original seagates, they seem to not work well with this method, but it worked fine on my Western Digital.
If you read around, there are a couple methods that will /sometimes/ work for obtaining a password. I had a similar problem with a hosed EEPROM and a locked 200GB WD drive. Using liveinfo2 I was able to get the password, and used hdunlock and hddisabl to unlock it.
PM me if you want any more details than that. If the drive is one of the original seagates, they seem to not work well with this method, but it worked fine on my Western Digital.