# Formatting password protected HD. (I have the password)



## NoId (Feb 18, 2012)

I have a seagate momentus 5400.6 hard drive that has been wiped with dban and password protected. I have the password. I am trying to format this hard drive to use as an external hard drive for my current laptop. I am unable to access this hard drive in "my computer" options. In disk manager it shows up as 0mb and "not initialized". When attempting to initialize this hard drive an error comes up saying "This device is not ready." In device manager it shows this hard drive as "working properly." I need to know how I can unlock this hard drive using the password so I can format it. Any help anyone can give me will be greatly appreciated.


----------



## MMM (Feb 18, 2012)

NoId said:


> I have a seagate momentus 5400.6 hard drive that has been wiped with dban and password protected. I have the password. I am trying to format this hard drive to use as an external hard drive for my current laptop. I am unable to access this hard drive in "my computer" options. In disk manager it shows up as 0mb and "not initialized". When attempting to initialize this hard drive an error comes up saying "This device is not ready." In device manager it shows this hard drive as "working properly." I need to know how I can unlock this hard drive using the password so I can format it. Any help anyone can give me will be greatly appreciated.


Since you used Dban you will need it to unlock the password, I would imagine Dban floppy/CD/DVD disc would have its own boot program to do this...


----------



## NoId (Feb 18, 2012)

Sorry for the confusion and thank you for your response. The password was applied while the HD was being used in my old laptop (Asus ul30vt) before it was wiped with DBAN. The bios boot program is American Megatrends which I believe is how I set the password on the HD. When the hard drive is placed in the old laptop it will allow me to unlock it ,but once unlocked a "Boot Manager missing" error comes up immediately and I must restart the laptop.


----------



## S.T.A.R.S. (Feb 19, 2012)

I assume you set the password on that HDD through BIOS.So connect that HDD back to your laptop where it was before,go to the BIOS and from there remove ALL the passwords from that HDD and it should fix your problem.



Cheers!


----------



## MMM (Feb 19, 2012)

S.T.A.R.S. said:


> I assume you set the password on that HDD through BIOS.So connect that HDD back to your laptop where it was before,go to the BIOS and from there remove ALL the passwords from that HDD and it should fix your problem.
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers!


Should work but I never heard of a Bios password stopping a hard drive to be reformatted or recognized....

Personally I would go into  manage my computer and get the hard drive recognized and reformat from there...


----------



## S.T.A.R.S. (Feb 19, 2012)

MMM said:


> Should work but I never heard of a Bios password stopping a hard drive to be reformatted or recognized....
> 
> Personally I would go into manage my computer and get the hard drive recognized and reformat from there...


 
I am NOT talking about the BIOS password.You missunderstood me.
I am talking about the HDD password stored on the special HDD sector that was set THROUGH BIOS.It has nothing to do with the BIOS password.BIOS is just used to SET the password ON THE HDD.
Also formatting the HDD does NOT remove the HDD password.He will not even be able to format the password protected/password locked HDD.That is the point of the HDD password so that is locks ANY possible attempts of read/write actions on the HDD.




Cheers!


----------



## NoId (Feb 19, 2012)

Thank you very much for the responses and help. I was able to remove the passwords using the old laptop then format the disk using the other. Thank you again for the help.


----------

