Removing ATA password from HDD. How to recover data on a hard drive and reset the HDD controller password Removing the password from the hard drive

Removing the password on the laptop's hard drive and BIOS is a fairly common problem that users often encounter. There are several methods (utilities) that can help you remove your password. At this point in time, many utilities are popular in solving this problem. To correct this situation, you need to follow certain rules.

You will need

Instructions

If you set a password and forgot it, these programs will be useful to you:

BIOS_PW.EXE (18KB) to remove the computer BIOS password.

HDD_PW.EXE (18KB) to remove the password from the hard drive.

Read more about unlocking your password. First you need to find out the error code.

To do this, press “F2” during boot and enter the wrong password three times.

Next, the system will display “System Disabled.

Launch the MS-DOS application.

Next, in the DOS window that opens, select the program name.

Enter the five-digit error code separated by a space, which is given by the laptop when the password is entered incorrectly.

Add the number 0 separated by a space.

Now press “Enter”. The program will provide you with several passwords. One of them should fit the BIOS.

After you enter passwords to the BIOS or HDD, do not forget to change them to new ones.

If you try to do the steps described above on a 64-bit platform, difficulties may arise.

The system will display that the utility or component cannot be launched because the program is not compatible with the 64-bit version. The solution is quite simple.

Download DOSBox from the developer’s website, install and run.

First mount drive C. You can do this with the following command: “mount c c:/”.

Then press “F2” again when loading and enter the wrong password three times.

Tip added on November 12, 2011 Tip 2: How to remove a password from a hard drive The password protection function of modern hard drives allows you to protect the contents of the drive without actually encrypting the data using an access restriction method. Using the free MHDD utility, designed to perform various operations with computer hard drives, can help solve the problem of password removal.

You will need

• -MHDD

Instructions

Familiarize yourself with the operating diagram of the hard drive password protection function: - access to the drive can be protected by a high or maximum password level; - a custom protection level can be set using the MHDD application; - the master password set by the hard drive manufacturer can only be changed; - using the master password allows you to unlock the hard drive only with a high level of protection (High); - with the maximum level of protection (Maximum), unlocking the hard drive is possible only when using a user password; - with the maximum level of protection (Maximum) and the absence of a user password, unlocking the hard drive can only be performed by destroying all information using the Security Erase Unit ATA command and confirming the procedure with a master password.

Determine the set protection level using the MHDD utility during the hard drive identification process (function key F2) b use the PWD command to set a user password. This action automatically uses the High protection level.

Use the UNLOCK command in the MHDD program and enter your user password in the appropriate field in the User Password section to perform the hard drive unlock operation.

Select the DISPWD command and enter your user password in the corresponding field of the User Password section to disable the password protection function of the hard drive, or use the master password (if it has not been changed) to perform the necessary operations.

Useful advice Known master passwords: - 32 spaces - for Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba hard drives; - Seagate, padded with spaces up to 32 characters - for Seagate hard drives; - Maxtor INIT SECURITY TEST STEP, padded with spaces up to 32 characters - for Maxtor hard drives; - 32 characters t - for Samsung hard drives; - WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD - for Western Digital hard drives. Sources

• Password system of modern drives

How to remove a password from a hard drive - printable version

Just recently I had to face a terrible situation. The hard drive is locked, although it’s only 8GB, but still that’s money too (:
When you turn on the computer and detect devices, having stumbled upon the definition of the hard drive, the computer displays a message

HDD Locked. Please enter the password

After researching the problem, I found a lot of interesting information regarding locked screws. After reading everything below, I did what is even below (:

There are paid solutions (expensive and 2 options with saving information (more expensive) and without it - cheaper).

Master passwords for HDD. Master ATA password.

Contrary to popular misconception, it is impossible to “lock” or “lock” a drive using the Master password. The master password can only be changed. The Master password can unlock the drive if the USER password is forgotten, but this is only possible if the security level was set to “High”. If the protection level is “Maximum”, then you can unlock the drive only by knowing the User password. If the protection level is “Maximum”, the User password is unknown, but the Master password is known, then it is possible to unlock the drive and destroy all data using the Security Erase Unit ATA command. This is implemented in MHDD (FASTERASE command), however this procedure in MHDD only works with User passwords.

Thus, a drive locked with the “High” security level can be unlocked using either the Master or User password. If the protection level is “Maximum”, then unlock
The drive can only be stored using a User password, or using a Master password, but with the destruction of all data.

Manufacturers set factory Master passwords, and if they are not changed in advance, they can be used to unlock a password-protected drive whose protection level is “High”.

You can set the User password by issuing the PWD command to the MHDD. In this case, the protection level is set to “High”. The option to set a different level in MHDD is not available for security reasons. Also, the entered password is displayed in the mhdd.log file. After setting the password, the drive must be turned off.

Unlocking a drive password-protected with the “High” security level is possible using a User or Master password. If the password is unknown, then, in general, it is impossible to unlock the drive, although there are two ways:

1. If the password is not encrypted by the drive itself, you can try to read it from the surface using technological commands;
2. Unlocking is possible using specially developed methods.

If the password is known, then the procedure for unlocking the drive in MHDD is as follows:
1. issue the UNLOCK command, select User password, and enter the password. This temporarily unlocks the drive (until you turn off the power).
2. issue the DISPWD command, select User password, and enter the password again. This completely removes the blockage.

According to the ATA/ATAPI standard, you cannot suppress the DISPWD command without first unlocking the drive with the UNLOCK command.

If the password is unknown and the protection level is “Maximum”, then you cannot do without special tools. If the password is unknown, and the protection level is “High”, and the Master password has not been changed, then it is possible to unlock the drive if you know the factory Master password.

List of known Master passwords:

Fujitsu hard drives: thirty-two spaces. In MHDD, you must enter 32 spaces when prompted for a password.

Seagate hard drives: the word “Seagate” without quotes, capitalized, padded with 25 spaces to 32 characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, you must enter the word Seagate followed by 25 spaces. Also, advice from one of the site visitors: if the password does not work, try entering the word SeaGate and 25 dots.

Winchesters Maxtor: the phrase “Maxtor INIT SECURITY TEST STEP” - case is important! There is one space at the end of the phrase. Password length is 31 characters.

Samsung hard drives: 32 "t" characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, you must enter 32 characters t.

Western Digital hard drives: the phrase “WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD”, without quotes.

IBM hard drives:
DTTA series: "CED79IJUFNATIT", padded with spaces up to 32 characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, enter the given phrase, followed by 18 spaces.
DJNA series: "VON89IJUFSUNAJ", padded with spaces up to 32 characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, enter the given phrase, followed by 18 spaces.
DPTA series: "VON89IJUFSUNAJ", padded with spaces up to 32 characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, enter the given phrase, followed by 18 spaces.
DTLA series: "RAM00IJUFOTSELET", padded with spaces up to 32 characters. In MHDD, when prompted for a password, enter the given phrase, followed by 16 spaces. http://www.ihdd.ru/mhdd

Hitachi hard drives, DK23AA, DK23BA, DK23CA series: thirty-two spaces. In MHDD, you must enter 32 spaces when prompted for a password.

Toshiba hard drives, all episodes: thirty-two spaces. In MHDD, you must enter 32 spaces when prompted for a password.

Below are the User passwords set in certain situations by various popular programs:
MHDD versions 3.x, occurs when an internal error occurs: 32 letters “A” or 32 letters “B” (capital Latin).
HDDL, occurs when a quick erase attempt fails: “fuck.”
HRT: 32 characters with code 0. In order to enter such a password in MHDD, just press ENTER when prompted for a password.
HDD ERASE 4.0: when cleaning the disk, sets the password “idrive” - you can also use it to remove it!

That's just a program HDD ERASE 4.0 I had a locked screw, all because I didn’t wait for the “erase” to finish and rebooted the machine...

Another IT riddle about passwords on storage media.

We have a WD400 hard drive like this:

Playful hands (or evil fate? (-:)) set a password on it.
On numerous forums, smart people write that this (setting a password) sometimes happens with storage media from WesternDigitall due to a power outage or incorrect termination of programs such as PQmagic or Acronis.

So, there is a task to remove.

A little theory from the help to Victoria:

Manage security options. Passwords, password removal, temporary unlocking.
Theoretical introduction:

Modern hard drives have 2 types of passwords and 2 security levels. First, let's look at the types of passwords:

• User password: serves to restrict access to user information. When setting a User password, the hard drive rejects commands such as reading and writing. Consequently, information from a password-protected hard drive cannot be read, changed, or erased. This can only be done after removing the password or after temporarily unlocking it.
• Master password: NOT intended to protect information. Its purpose is to delete the User password in case of loss of the latter. The master password, once installed on the hard drive, will not affect its performance in any way.

Let's return to the levels of secrecy. There are 2 of them, and they relate only to the User password:

• High: high level. The High level password can be deleted using the Master password while saving the information on the hard drive.
• Maximum: maximum level. If a User password of the Maximum level is set on the hard drive, then the Master password cannot be used to remove it (the screw will generate an error), and to remove the password you will have to use Security Erase. This is a special command that will ask you to transfer the Master password to the screw, after which it will erase all information from it, and only after that it will unlock it.

If you lose both the User and Master passwords, the password-protected hard drive becomes physically unsuitable for storing information. Without knowing the Master password, you cannot unlock it. Therefore, be careful with the HDD security system.

Is it possible to “find” a lost password using brute force? In the case of a hard drive, it’s almost impossible. According to the ATA standard, after FIVE unsuccessful attempts to enter a password, the screw blocks the commands (in this case, the “Expired” status will appear in the passport). Re-entry is possible only after turning the power on and off. There is no limit on 5 attempts if you use erasure via the master password to remove the password. In this case, a natural obstacle to brute force will be the readiness pause (about 1 second) issued by the screw.

Practice setting and removing passwords.

There are keys for working with passwords And , as well as alternative console commands:

PWD: set disk password;

DISPWD: remove password from disk;

UNLOCK: temporarily unlock the screw (before turning off the power);

LOCK : temporarily disable the password system (until power is turned off);

After entering the commands, a menu will appear on the screen with a choice of password options and privacy level. Navigate through the menu using the arrow keys (up and down), selecting the desired item using the ENTER key. Next you will be prompted to enter a password:

Enter password:_

After entering the password, press ENTER. If the screw does not generate an error, the password will be set immediately.

It should be borne in mind that master passwords for most hard drives are preset at the factory, and thanks to the Internet, they can be known to a wide range of people. Therefore, it is better to change the master password immediately. The set master password will not affect access to information in any way.
On the contrary, if someone locks the hard drive (for example, a malicious program-virus), knowing the master password you can unlock it.

To remove the user password using a known master password, you need to:

• By pressing F10, select the “master password” item in the menu;
• enter the master password (up to 32 characters). The Winchester will be unlocked.

This method will only work if the password security level = High. If the level is set to Maximum, a disk erase warning will be issued. You can agree or cancel (if the information cannot be lost). If you agree, the program will prompt you to enter a master password, after which the hard drive will set it to BUSY and begin erasing information. If at this moment you turn off the power of the hard drive, or give it a soft reset command, the erasing will stop, but the password will remain. You should wait until BUSY is removed, and only after
After receiving your passport, make sure that the passwords have been removed.

A useful use of the password erase option is to quickly delete all information (for example, before selling the HDD). In addition, security erasure, being by its nature a recording, has its own
ability to eliminate some types of surface defects and update SMART statistics. In order to perform a quick erase through the security system, you must:

• set any Maximum level user password to the screw;
• set any master password to the screw, for example 1234. Both passwords can be the same;
• By pressing F10, select a master password, then enter it and wait for the operation to complete.

Sometimes it happens that security erasing fails with an error some time after it starts. This can happen if the hard drive is physically faulty.

Note:

1. If you have already called up the password entry line, but have changed your mind about entering it, press ESC.
2. To prevent forgetfulness, the program creates a small (32 byte) text file in the current directory, in which it places the entered password. The next time you enter the password, the program itself will read the contents of the file and slip it under the user’s nose :) This option can be easily disabled; how to do this, read the “Working with ini file” section.
3. If the tested drive stated in its passport that it does not support security options, a message will be displayed in the bottom line of the screen: “Attention: this HDD does not support working with passwords!” The inscription will not prevent you from _trying_ to set/remove the password to verify this practically.

After some poking around Google, it turned out that the standard master password for WD hard drives is 32 characters like this: " WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD".

At first nothing worked:

Then, apparently, a miracle happened and we saw the wonderful inscription “Done” after executing the password reset command:

And it seems like already HURRAY! ....but after a reboot the password appeared again and now it can’t be removed...

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

P.S. Acelab PC-3000 and A-FF REPAIR are not offered, since the use of these products is much more expensive than the cost of a hard drive.

However, this would not be a problem if people did not forget these very established codes. If this is your first time encountering this situation and you don’t know how to remove the password from the hard drive on your laptop, then this article is intended just for you.

HDD

If you installed the code on internal media and forgot, then you will not even be able to boot the OS installed on your PC. That is, there will simply be no possibility of using a laptop or computer for its intended purpose. In such a situation, the user can only delete the set password because there is no other way to gain access to the computer.

Online service

There are several ways to remove the password from the hdd, and one of them is the well-known online service “ BIOS Password Removal for Laptops».

To get rid of forgotten code by using it you need to:

• Enter it incorrectly 3 times (any combination of numbers or letters).
• After this, a special code should appear in the window.
• We copy the received numbers.
• We enter the same combination on the website using the link provided above.

A few seconds after entering a combination of numbers in a specially designated line, you will receive a code that will help you reset the password from your drive.

It should be clarified that this program is suitable for all models and manufacturers of hard drives (seagate, hitachi, toshiba, wd, etc.). Moreover, it does not matter what operating system is installed on your computer or laptop, because... This service is considered universal.

BIOS

You can remove the password from a hard drive in the BIOS only if the encryption was initially installed through BIOS.

All you need to do is use the standard reset settings to default option:

Thus, we reset the password from the HDD.

Second way

The next option is a free one, specially created for a variety of operations with hard drives.

First, you need to familiarize yourself with how the drive’s password protection works:

• The hard drive can have high or maximum level protection.
• Using the MHDD application, you can set a custom protection level.
• The master password set by the manufacturer can only be changed.
• Using a master password makes it possible to unlock the disk only with a high level of protection.
• In the case of the maximum level of protection, the hard drive can only be unlocked if a user code is installed.
• If the maximum level of protection is set and there is no user password, then the drive can only be unlocked by destroying all data using the Security Erase Unit ATA command.

Considering the above information, in order to remove the password from the hard drive, you should:

This way, you can very quickly remove a previously entered and forgotten code.

Third way

The program HDD_PW.EXE (18KB) will also help you remove the password from your hard drive. In order to remove the code using it, you need to do the following:

• Find out the error code (when loading, press F2 and enter the wrong combination of numbers three times, after which a special code will appear on the screen)
• Launch the MS-DOS application.
• Select the utility name in the window that opens.
• Enter the error code you learned earlier, separated by a space, and add 0, separated by a space.
• By pressing “Enter”, several passwords will appear in front of you, one of which will definitely work.

After entering the code, be sure to change it to a new one and write it down.

When performing these steps on a 64-bit system, you may encounter some difficulties. The system may generate an error due to a utility mismatch. In this situation it is necessary:

• Download DOSBox, install and run.
• Mount drive “C” with the command “mount c c:/”.
• Then, at startup, press “F2”, again type the wrong code 3 times and do the same steps.

To eliminate the possibility of such situations occurring, it is recommended to completely get rid of the encryption by disabling it in the PC settings. If you urgently need it, then you should write it down in a notepad or any other place so that you don’t have to reset it again.

If you have a Lenovo laptop and upon startup the message “enter hdd password” is displayed on the screen, the method discussed in this video will help you:

youtube.com/watch?v=dKLZjrTyTeQ&t=174s

yeah the answer is off Lenovo "Aleksandr Goncharov:"

Added 3 minutes later:

I found an express programmer on Ali =)) with the ability to cure my problem at the hardware level, the problem is that it costs more than a new hard drive...

Added 11 minutes later:

Spoiler

Aleksandr Goncharov: Hello, my name is Aleksandr Goncharov. How can I help you?
Aleksandr Goncharov: Are you here?
. Gennady: Hello, I have a specific problem. After the kids played with my G700, the BIOS got corrupted. I removed the password through the service center by flashing the chip. There they told me that my hard drive was also corrupted. Empirically, I found out that the blocking level is High; I need a master password from st500lm000-1ej162. I already contacted the SeaGate company where they told me that the motherboard manufacturer could help me!!
Aleksandr Goncharov: We don't have such passwords.
Contact our service center, maybe they can tell you something
https://www3.lenovo.com/ru/ru/services-cts/
. Gennady: I ​​won’t tell you...
. Gennady: t
. Gennady: I've already contacted them, everyone wants more money than the hard drive is worth...
Aleksandr Goncharov: Unfortunately we are just support, we do not have such information
. Gennady: I found a way, I found the software, but I need information that the laptop manufacturer knows, and so I communicate with the manufacturer’s representative and they tell me: “we don’t know anything” because this is not correct!!
. Gennady: ok where is this information??
. Gennady: for free
Aleksandr Goncharov: This information is available only to Lenovo engineers, this information is not publicly available, and we cannot provide it to you.
. Gennady: super!!! question why the hell!? There is generally a hard drive lock...
. Gennady: you can't, who can?
. Gennady: or how can I communicate with engineers?
Aleksandr Goncharov: There is no blocking, there is a white list of devices that can work with this motherboard
. Gennady: nooo, that’s not what you’re talking about now...
. Gennady: It's not about blocking with a TPM chip
. Gennady: we are talking about setting an ATA password on the hard drive
. Gennady: I'll go smoke for 5 minutes, otherwise this problem is really getting on my nerves
Aleksandr Goncharov: Unfortunately, I can’t help you, this password can only be set by the user, and we don’t have information on how to remove it
Aleksandr Goncharov: The master key may be available at the Lenovo factory, but it only applies to new devices, old devices are only recycled.
. Gennady: When installing any hard drive in any laptop, at the time of initialization (filling the MBR or GPT partition table), the motherboard enters a master password into a certain cluster on the system “partition (beginning of the disk)” of the disk...
. Gennady: In the BIOS of any computer, you can set a user password so that this hard drive cannot be read without first unlocking it with a password. The only way to remove a user password is to enter the master password that was set by the motherboard. In this case, complete loss of data occurs.
. Gennady: You can’t even reflash the firmware of the hard drive itself without removing the lock!!
. Gennady: the second method is the PC3000 hardware and software complex, and only if the hard drive has a slot for it
. Gennady: everything
. Gennady: now I have information for you =))
Aleksandr Goncharov: I forwarded this question to our technical department, from there they immediately received an answer that we do not provide such information. We just don't have it
. Gennady: where is it and how can I contact them??
. Gennady: email, phone, form to fill out, just so I know that the request will go where it needs to go!!
. Gennady: *form
Aleksandr Goncharov: We don't have that option. and I repeat once again, you will not be provided with this information since this is information only for internal use and is not in the public domain
. Gennady: you didn’t help me, if anything....
. Gennady: at least give false hope
. Gennady: If I cope with this problem myself, then in my eyes you will all become complete idiots and idiots....
. Gennady: You can’t do a technique without foolproofing!!