Ok, i'm new to this forum but a longtime veteran of troubleshooting, so i'm not asking some simple problem: with this intro let me begin: i owned a dell laptop for quite some time and one day the MB fried my HD was locked with a password (not the bios password which blocks the COMPUTER from booting but rather the HD password which blocks access to the HD. but i thought to myself "no big deal" and popped in my old HD into my new compaq laptop - and it asked me for my password - so i entred it but it wouldn't recognize it. so i bought a USB adapter that would let me attach my HD to my computer externally via my USB port. i booted the computer and when windows loaded i plugged in the USB device with the HD attached and still no luck - the computer didn't recognize that there was a disk attached to it, just the computer slowed down until i unplugged the HD. when the HD was attached (via USB) at boot time - the computer just stalled (i'm talking a few minutes)- even with the other HD (the one that i use currently) removed or set to slave. iv'e tried winternals ERD commander but it wouldn't load to the disk. i tried PTD which did detect my disk (in the dos version) but it wouldn't let me unlock it (it asked for a floppy, and my computer doesn't have a floppy drive) if this may be of any use, my current compaq model is X6000 and you can go to their website and see which version of bios i'm using. my old Dell was a latitude CPIa. i have some rare fonts which i created, and they are being held hostage on my HD. please help and email me if you need more details. thanks for looking and an even greater thanks if you can help me out.

Try using your ide connector to usb on a desktop. I have found laptops generally don't have enough power on the bus to power it up.

If you're interested, you might want to visit this site... http://www.nortek.on.ca/ But if you're a very patient man (I literally mean very patient), then you can go to this site and find the answer yourself. :-) http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/gee2000918002375.htm BTW, here's a sample of what you can find in the site above. "As you will probably understand it is not possible for me to give the 'official' method of cracking the HDD password and this in any case requires a small amount of hardware. However I can tell you that the drive controller checks for the password protection only once at startup. Also that the data on a 'locked' drive is not encrypted. Therefore after successful calibration on an unlocked drive, the drive controller is in a condition where it can read data from the disk platters and no subsequent check for password is made until the drive is powered down or is put into sleep mode (using the appropriate ATA command). So you will probably have guessed what you could try should you have a second unlocked 'donor' drive of the same model & firmware revision. This method if done properly will allow one to bypass the password lock to gain access to data but will not reveal what the original password was. To do that you must use the 'official' method, which on a drive from a DELL or IBM Thinkpad machine reveals what the original password was, in plain text (or in encrypted form if from another type of laptop). Please note that the two controllers must have an IDENTICAL firmware level otherwise corruption of the data (due to sector mapping errors) may occur. The firmware level is available as an ASCII field in the IDENTIFY information returned by issuing the IDENTIFY DEVICE ATA command (0xEC). This will work on a locked or unlocked drive. Also please note that the above 'bypass' procedure could damage one or both controllers if not performed properly - you have been warned! Hope this is of some help..." Expert™

thanks, i figured that an option would be to replace the controler - but i'm not interested in doing so, and neither am i interested in wasting a drive. what i wanted to know - (and i see that it's mentioned in the post too) is that maybe i would need to change the BIOS to something dell-based (since the locked HD was locked on a dell machine) and then unlock it from there (-remember, i still remember the password but it just won't go with this compaq) and btw - my laptop is power hungry - it runs @ 120 degrees (f) and that's hot - it's a p4 3.0 ghz HT and i have 1.5 G of DDR2 PC4200 RAM (not that it makes a difference in regards to my problem)

Most HDD passwords cannot be bypassed by the end user. The method to disable this "feature" requires advanced knowledge of electronics. When the hardrive initially spins up after power on it remains in its locked state, read/write abilities are disabled. To enable read/write the controller issues some specific commands to disable the lock. After these commands are received the hardrive functions as normal. If the BIOS does not receive the correct password then it will not tell the controller to unlock the drive. The only way to unlock the drive is to input the password or mimic the unlock commands. A circuit can be built with an IDE interface and a custom made controller like interface. When built correctly this circuit can issue the disable hardware lock command and read/write abilities are then restored. In order to build this circuit and program it would require much knowledge of digital electronics. So the only way for the end users to bypass this lock is to find the password or send the hardrive to the manufacture or and expert.