[ale] OT: Looking for some help with "locked" IBM Travelstar 30 Gig Laptop Hard Drive

[Greg Freemyer]

I don't know if it will help, but check out:

"ATA Password Tool," http://www.upsystems.com.ua/support/alexmina/atapwd.zip

I only know about it from reading a ATA drive white-paper discussing
forensic issues:

http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir1638.pdf

Chapter 5 of that white paper describes the ATA password feature.  I
may be worth reading to understand what your trying to do.  Note that
the goal of the white-paper is to read the protected data on the
drive.  I think yours is just to make the drive usable again, so you
may have a chance even if you can find the default master password.

Good Luck
Greg

On 7/16/05, Van Loggins <vanloggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> I got this off ebay for as a replacement drive for my Apple Powerbook G4
> 500 MHz Titanium laptop that I am rebuilding.
> 
> To make a very long story short, This drive came out of an IBM Thinkpad
> that seller was parting out for parts on ebay. The seller didn't know
> that the drive had a password set on it while it was installed in the
> IBM laptop. No one knows what the password was set to so the drive is
> for all practical extents and purposes useless unless someone here can
> help me out with a procedure to erase the service cylinder on the drive
> which is where the password is stored according to all the info on the
> subject that I have found using the google search engine. I have found
> several services that offer a drive unlock service for this type of
> situation but all of them cost more than I can buy another laptop drive for.
> 
> I thought using DD to erase the drive might do the trick but I was
> wrong. Basically by having this lock in place on the drive it doesn't
> allow you to make changes to the MFT table so you can't create a new
> partition on the drive. Someone removed the partition on the drive
> without clearing the password.
> 
> Any ideas anyone? I'm currently using a 20 gig drive in my Powerbook,
> but it originally came with a 30 gig ibm travelstar drive so I would
> kind of like to put it back to the original specifications.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Van
> 
> --
> Van Loggins        vanloggins at gmail.com
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-- 
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century