Remove Hardrive password on Gateway 7000 Notebook

[maboroshi]

Hi Everyone

I am running into a Problem I just got my old laptop back from my brother he said it wasn't working

I am trying to install an OS on it but it has a hard drive password

I've been doing some research and appearantly its no easy task to unlock this

I have contacted Gateway support and they won't help me cause it is no longer under warranty

I do not have a recovery disk for the system

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to remove the password

I have read there is a master password which I will look for today

If not maybe I can code something to reset it

Resetting the BIOS will not work either as the password is installed on the hard drive

Anyway thanks for your help

[maboroshi]

Well looks like this may be a real challenge to Unlock

according to this it can't be done

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/qcheck.htm#a13

Does anyone have any resources for the encryption algorithm Hitachi might be using

I plan on building a tool to Crack it

[bad_brain]

hm, yeah, I googled too for a while.....the question is: is the password simply on a sector of the HDD or is the protection done by a chip? in the first case you could connect the HDD to another computer and use the Ultimate Bootdisk to wipe it completely....

[maboroshi]

I found this

tool and guide

http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html

but I have yet to try it

[bad_brain]

oh, nice...let us know how it worked...

[Still_Learning]

maybe put a real powerful magnet next to the drive / chip for a while?

[bad_brain]

not a good idea...enough real tiny and sensitive metal parts in there...