Locked hard disk

[theKonqueror]

Guys, help me....
I have a seagate 20GB HDD borrowed from a friend 4 some days. Since yesterday, my PC asks HDD password and gives 5 tries during POST. I cant skip this process since it is on bios screen. I never heard of locking HDd like this. If i give wrong password, it says, SYSTEM LOCKED. I cant go further, and PC does not boot. I googled 4 it, but it did not help. What shud i do? I never gave any password to anything, and no 1 other than me touches my PC, so how this happen? Will upgrading firmware help?

[theraven]

hmmm
bios password huh ?
remove ur cmos battery and reinsert after sometime
this should clear ur bios settings

[theKonqueror]

Originally Posted by theraven

hmmm
bios password huh ?
remove ur cmos battery and reinsert after sometime
this should clear ur bios settings

Dude, u must read carefully what I said... Its HDD password and not BIOS password. U might never heard abt this, even I too have seen it 4 1st time. Googling 4 it gave me nothing. Only 1 thing I came 2 know is that this password is stored on HDD platter and can't be changed by upgrading firmware of HDD. When I remove the HDD PC boots fine frm other HDD.

[aadipa]

Never heard about HDD Password. May be some boot manager asking for it.
If it is then try to repair MBR by booting with another bootable media

If it asks the password to access the HDD, then this method should help u to access the HDD from another HDD with WinXP

What u need to do is, just goto BIOS and select this perticular HDD as "Not Installed"
Now boot with other HDD in WinXp which will autodetect the HDD and allow u to take the backup of data. Then try low level format to recover your HDD.

Best of luck