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Hard DRive Password

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by steviecomputer

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I have a number of IBM 560's and 600's that have passwords on the harddrive-This stops you booting up the machine-even from floppy-Is there any way to revoeve the password.
Does any one know where the password is held, Is it on the controller board? or is it rittenn to the MBR? If it is written to the MBR, maybe I could swap ovewer the contoller board and use FDISK\MBR-to clear it, or some s/w that will read the MBR?
Help is appreaciated-Thanks

26 replies

by diabetic

Your proposed solution is an excellent way to remove all Windows paswords, however it will not help if the password in question is in CMOS, or if the password is in a non-windows system file.

by kaycen

Have you tried running FDISK and just deleting the partition(s) and then performed that FDISK \mbr?

If that doesn't do it, there would have to be a jumper on the hard drive itself.

You might look on the IBM tech support site too.

by steviecomputer

Unfortunatelly, I can't Boot up, not even from floppy! I will have a look at the HDD and see if it has a jumper on it-IBM say it can't be removed, and will not help ( except sell a replacement DRive)-but I hope they are wrong!

by casanne

The password could be in the setup. Unfortunately, you need to know what it is to change it or disable it. When the pc is booting, you would choose to go into setup, under security settings, and disable the password.

There is also a way to changeit without knowing what the password is through resetting a jumper on the motherboard. You'd have to have a schematic from the manufacturer to find out which jumper needs to be changed.

by diabetic

If you cannot find the jumper on the motherboard, unplug the system and remove all the external peripherals.

Open the case and remove the CMOS battery.

Let the system sit overnight to remove any residual charge.

Reverse the process and plugeveything back in, when you reboot the bios will have to reinitialize, and the password will be gone.

by stw

i have run into this on some older hardrives where there is a jumper on the hardrive itself. in some cases this will prevent you from f-disking the drive.
i usually go to the drive manufacturers website and download the schematic of the drive.
thejumper is not marked on the drive for security reasons.
on an older drive i ran into, i ended up cloning the drive to a newer drive because the jumper information was not available.
good luck

by radiic

Usually most manufactures use jp1 on the m/b for this function. It is usually a 3 pin jumper near the cmos battery. If you jumper it on the other 2 pins (ie if pins 1&2 are jumpered, put the jumper on pins 2&3), power on for about 10 seconds then power off. Jumper back to the original setting. That will reset your bios back to the factory defaults. Better than waiting all night.

Good Luck
Rad

by keith

IBM has 3 levels of passwords on their laptops, power on, administrator and hard drive. You can clear the power on password with a jumper. For an administrator password, replace the system board on some models. For the hard drive, replace the hard drive. It CANNOT be removed.

by et2002

He's correct about IBM ...
You're out of luck
IBM has 3 levels of passwords on their laptops, power on, administrator and hard drive. You can clear the power on password with a jumper. For an administrator password, replace the system board on some models. For the hard drive, replace the hard drive. It CANNOT be removed.

From: keith@microagepei.com Date: 11/19/01

by kima

Some laptops and other machines can provide a utility to software lock a hard disk with a password. These passwords are not the same as BIOS passwords. Moving a locked hard disk to another machine will not unlock it. Also, adding a new hard disk to a locked machine will cause the new hard disk to become locked. Also, note that hard disk lock passwords cannot be removed by reformatting the disk, fdisk or any other software procedure. Low-level formats may be successful at removing the data, but will not unlock the disk. Usually, the BIOS password and hard disk lock passwords are the same and we can recover the BIOS password directly from the chip. However, it is possible that the BIOS password and hard disk lock passwords may be different. In this case the BIOS password will not unlock the hard disk. In some cases the hard disk may not be recoverable, in which case you will be able to unlock the machine and install a new hard disk -- but the hard disk data will not be able to be accessed.

RECOVERY IF YOU CAN BOOT THE SYSTEM

If you can boot the system, BIOS password recovery is usually easy. The first thing you will want to do is to use a BIOS password cracker to recover the actual password. There are a large number ofBIOS password crackers available from a variety of sources. Some BIOS crackers only work with certain BIOS versions and some work better than others. You may have to try a number of crackers before you find one that works. We have listed a few sites where you can download free BIOS password crackers below:

Christophe Grenier - http://www.esiea.fr/public_html/Christophe.GRENIER/

Eleventh Alliance - http://www.11a.nu/pages.htm

Rempass - http://natan.zejn.si/rempass.html

by kima

Some BIOS? have pre-installed backdoor passwords that enable access to the system if you have lost or forgotten your password. Attempting to regain access to the computer by using one of the following backdoor passwords should be your first step ifyou have lost or forgotten your BIOS password and cannot boot your computer. If you are able to regain access to your system by using a backdoor password, you can then use a password cracker to reveal the stored password or enter the BIOS setup to change the password. These backdoors are more likely to work on older desktop systems. We are not aware of any name brand laptops or notebooks that have backdoor BIOS passwords.

by codewarrior2001

Years ago, I supported a sales force that used IBM laptops and the laptops had multiple layers of password security (CMOS, HD and OS). We used to have a floppy disk from IBM that would enable us to unlock the hard drive's password for those users who forgot their passwords. However, you said that you cannot boot around the harddrive with a floppy which leads me to believe that the problem is that the CMOS is password protected, not the hard drive. The hard drive would not know about other devices on the drive chain and would only prompt for a password if the drive was being accessed.

Please verify that the password is not CMOS based. If so, remove the CMOS battery and let sit for about 24 hours (the 1K resistor thing doesn't always work).

My two cents.

by hydroracer

These passwords are usually in the BIOS.
open the case and check the jumper settings,
there is usually a sticker with all the jumpers listed on IBM's. Move the one jumper ,power up, and it should boot.

by kolossus

Here is an easy way to determine which device has the password:

1. Unhook the Hard Drive
2. Boot up the computer and see if you still get asked for a password. If you do then the password is at the CMOS level if you do not then the password is at the HD level.

by siskoed

Every machine has to have an always-on CMOS chip or it won't boot. Pull the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS and that should clear it up.

by steviecomputer

Many Thanks for all your replies!
The Password is ONLY on the HDD, I can remove the HDD and boot from floppy, or put in a good HDD and that will boot.
As I have a couple of these HDD's, I swapped over the controller board form a HDD (of the same model, size etc, but no Pasrord)and the HDD with then Password still had the Password-So it must be written to the disk (MBR?).I think I have a couple of options:-
1) By new HDD's-defenatly quicker
2) Find some old laptops and try the HDD's in therein the hope that it will boot up and I can FDISK \MBR.

Unless anyone has any other ideas?

by kima

As I explain on my previous post sometimes the BIOS password is the same as the HDD,doesn't mean all the time. But if you are lucky and you like challenges you'll go for it.

If you can boot your computer, get some cracking software as I said on my previous post and crack the BIOS password, once crack use that password for the HDD, it might work or it might not what you have to loose...

It's just a challenge.. If it works, then you know what to do next time, if it doesn't well it was well a try, but you still learn somethig from it....

Yes, buying new HDD is faster, but that avoids the challenge... CHALLENGES are VERY GOOD, time consuming sometimes but at the end you feel good about it and learn sometime new out of it...

To speed up you can buy new HDD,but for the long run go on with the CHALLENGE...

by diabetic

Just a random thought on the day before Thanksgiving.

Configure the drive as a slave, with another drive as the boot, then FDISK /MBR and see if that does anything. Might also want to look very carefully at the hard drive, noting any jumpers or jmper pin and see if you can determine what they are for.

We are all assuming, however, that you have been to the IBM website.

by dsagun

Got the same problem. I tried everything from removing the battery to erase the cmos setting, to jumping the cable on the motherboard to reset the BIOS setting. All of them don't work. It will still prompt me for a "HDD password". Looks like i need a replacement disk. Any more technical ideas out there to help solve this problem.

by et2002

... perhapss the password is written on a chip and knowing which chip and removing it or replacing it may be an option ...
***don't kill the messenger*** lol ;-)

by lordinfidel

Only some of the people here got it right.

There is no such beast as a Hard Drive password.

he was clearly mistaking this for a Bios Password.

Some Bios's can protect the bootup process by enabling a password.

This can be easily removed by clearing the Bios password with a jumper on the motherboard.

by timnmb2

As I have a locked drive also. I have a free and clear bios with no password. If I install it into my laptop, it comes back with wanting a password to access the drive. This option pops up even before the startup screen. If I put it into anothercomputer, fdisk says there is no fixed drive, even though the bios sees it on start up.

by lordinfidel

HDD's don't naturally come installed with their own controller on them. (compaq's though used to have the bios installed on the HDD)

Which means that the only way a hdd can have a password is if a 3rd party piece of software has been installed on the boot sector.

I still stick to my guns on this until I can be proved otherwise with a make and model of a HDD that has this feature built in without any assistance from 3rd party software.

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