locked hitachi harddrive help!

I have a locked hitachi 2.5" harddrive that i would like to get unlocked. i work as a technician and contacted hitachi directly and they stated they wouldnt be able to give me a master password since this is a security feature. im hoping someone out there knows how to get one of these passwords to unlock this harddrive. its a:
hitachi travelstar - model: ic25n020atmr04-0 4200rpm ata/ide drive

thanks in advance for all of the advice
Brian

 

Try lookin here.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/tech...3F11FE187256C4F0052E6B6/$file/80GNSpec2.0.pdf

 

thanks for the link even though it seems way above my head. do you think any of this crazy information i found has any chance? ive taken drives out of pcs when they were plugged in and it freezes the machine. for this guy to do it without it freezing seems crazy. i dont want to ruin my laptop by trying this. any thoughts?

*
*

I did it! I "hack" it! Ok, first the disclaimer: I AM NOT
RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED TO YOUR
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE/FAMILY/PETS/RELIGON/PERSONALITY/ETC IF YOU ATTEMP
THIS! TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Now with that said, here's my story: I had a 80GB locked drive with a
password in it. This is when you boot up the pc, the first thing it
does is ask you for the HDD password. Even if you go into the bios,
it will ask before it does and if you input an incorrect password, it
will go into the bios without detecting your HDD. All this is done on
my 7 year old Dell CPX laptop. Not sure how it works on others so
don't ask or tell me it's different cuz I don't own your laptop.

Anyway, here's what I did: You'll need 2 HDD for this to work. The
lock one, and one that's not locked (or if you know the password).
First you put in the unlock drive. Boot up to the bios and go to
where you can set a HDD password. Set a password. Then after doing
so, reboot the laptop and go into the bios again. At this point, the
system will ask you for the password you just set. Type it in and go
to the set password page again in the bios. This time, you are going
to change the password to none BUT not to this drive, but to the LOCK
drive. Here's how I did it on mine exactly: To clear/change the
password, I have to input the old password first, then after doing so,
it will ask me to input a new one. At this point, I yank the HDD out
and stick the LOCK HDD in WHILE THE SYSTEM IS STILL ON! On mine, it
did not lock up or anything. I press ENTER 2 times (might be
different on your laptop) to clear the password and that was it! I
reboot with the 80GB still inside and it didn't ask me for my password
anymore!!! WOOHOO!!!

Try it and see and report back here with your resaults and include
laptop brand and maybe even works for desktops... who knows! Report
if it doesn't work also so people can see what happens or even if your
PC blows up...

 

Well you could try that, but there's a fair change for system freeze. I wouldnt recommend doing that.

 

just a little fyi, just tried to do the harddrive swap after changing the password in the bios. doesnt work. nice try though. still at a loss for what to do.

 

that's kind of like a hotswap on an xbox, i had to do that crap for all these old locked hdd's from other xboxes so i could use their info on the new hdd (its so you can play on live without getting caught).. i used config magic to do it