I have a big problem. 
I have a PC with a 120GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8MB Cache hard drive.
it worked fine at first, but then, a few months ago, I started getting
these weird hard disk read failures, after restarting. usually,
another restart would fix it, and since I rarely restart my computer
(it is usually on weeks at a time), I didn't give it another thought
and figured something must be wrong with my motherboard or something..

until a few weeks ago, when my hard drive stopped responding all together.

I took out an old 40G drive from the closet and installed windows XP on it.
with it I tried to access my 120G drive. with no luck, windows refused
to give it a drive letter, though I could see it in "Device manager"
it was impossible to access the drive in any way. I got the same
result in Linux. no mounting what so ever.

then I started using diagnostic tools and recovering software.. every
recovering tool just said it could not access the drive, and when I
ran Western digitals own diagnostic tool, it said it couldn't access
the drive because it was LOCKED.

LOCKED ? 

I immediately called western digital on the phone and spoke with
technical support. Their response was that they are aware their drives
can be locked, but offer no support on the subject, and also hinted to
me that it may be the cause of a virus.

I also tried a tool called ATAPWD.EXE for locking / unlocking hard
drives, but it also said it couldn't gain access to the drive.

Why am I going through all this effort?
I have about 60G of documents, programs, family pictures and other
important files.

I refuse to believe this is a hardware problem, and more over, I
refuse to pay some disk recovery lab hundreds of dollars for unlocking
my drive.
I am certain, that with the right help, I can recover the files myself.

I require a solution that does not involve taking the hard drive apart
or seeking professional help. nor do I need people telling me how
stupid I am for not backing up.

I know how stupid I am.

in any case,
this is my conundrum. I will supply you with any system information you need.

thanks for your help.

Good day.

Yoav Erez.

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 17 Apr 2004 12:49 PDT

yoe...

This page from DataRecoveryPros.com describes a method
which sounds strange, but often works well - freezing 
the drive:
http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-drive-recovery-freeze.html

Freezing the drive is only appropriate for drives which are
*not* spinning. If it is spinning, other solutions should
be tried. Can you hear your drive spinning?

There are some other options linked at the bottom of the page,
including hitting it and dropping it. These are not jokes.
They often work when other means fail.

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 17 Apr 2004 14:12 PDT

yes, the drive is spining. in fact,
I have this "Ultimate boot CD"
which has a little system bench mark tool, and if i remmemeber
correctly, i even got him to bench mark this drive.

so yes, it is speaning.

---

Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 17 Apr 2004 14:50 PDT

Hi yoe,

Just three things I have found searching online - I've no experience
with any of them.

MICROSOFT DOS: Information about the lock/unlock command.
unlock c: - This would unlock the C: drive
"It is important to know that if errors occur indicating that a
process such as fdisk or a setup of a new program or operating system
occur indicating that the process cannot continue because the hard
disk drive is locked that using the unlock command will resolve this
issue."
http://www.computerhope.com/lockhlp.htm

iDrive Repair:
BinaryBiz? Remote Hard Drive Repair Services
http://www.binarybiz.com/hddrepair/index.php

View Thread : Problems Unlocking Western Digital 45GB
"I have several western digital 45gig Hard Drives that I have tried to
unlock using MHD3. Each time I get the message that my drive is now
blank but when I reboot the drive is still locked. I have had no
problems using the utility on some seagate 40gigs. I have even tried
changing it to slave and master with slave present with no luck."
"to check the drive after the MHD3 program comes back and says it has
been unlocked?? Try this when the program completes and it says "drive
is now blank" wait 20-25 minutes on the A>prompt before rebooting and
see if its unlocked. I had the same issues and the only solution that
worked for me was to wait the extra 20-30 minutes and reboot. It has
come back unlocked everytime since I started using that process. Post
results."
"Thanks for your input. I did what you suggested and it worked
perfectly on all my drives. I appreciate the help."
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-31990

Good luck!
hummer

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 18 Apr 2004 14:21 PDT

Thanks for your response!

first solution:

I havent really tried it, but i doubt it would help since i dont even
have a C: drive, it wont recognize the drive as a partition.

Second Solution:

the iDrive Repair, seems like a good program, but it doesnt really work
I launch the idrive repair client and it wont connect.
i even downloaded the Virtual lab client from the same site and tried
to scan my drive but with no luck. after 8 hours of work, it was still
at 1% and said it had 92301231923 minutes remaining. it just wont
access the drive.

Third solution:
though i could not find this MHD3 anywhere, i am afraid to use it.
as you saw, the massage after suceeding to unlock the drive was :
"Drive is now blank"

I dont want my drive to be blank! I want to be full of my files.

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 18 Apr 2004 18:02 PDT

yoe...

I've been searching for awhile, and here's a couple of
options you can try:

- Change the jumper settings to cable select or single or 
  remove the jumpers.

- Restart in safe mode to run a scan disk.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 20 Apr 2004 12:34 PDT

you're kidding.. right?
changing the jumpers doesnt help. 
and if you have read what i wrote, you would understand that windows
refuses to access the drive!

you'll have to do a lot better then that.

---

Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 20 Apr 2004 12:48 PDT

"until a few weeks ago, when my hard drive stopped responding all together"

"...with no luck, windows refused to give it a drive letter"

"...windows refuses to access the drive!"

Let's get back to basic troubleshooting. Just to be sure that your
drive has not become physically defective, please go to the BIOS
settings and try to autodetect the 120GB Western Digital drive. Please
tell us if the BIOS can detect the drive or not.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 20 Apr 2004 16:02 PDT

You're not listening to me. 

OF COURSE the bios can detect the hard drive.
i'm not new to this computer thing. i was a technitian at a computer
store for 2 years.

like i said.
the Bios recognizes it, windows recognizes it, linux recognies it.

they just cant ACCESS IT.
windows wont give it a drive letter,
linux won't mount it,
recovery tools will scan it for hours and then say they cant read from it.

---

Request for Question Clarification by markoft-ga on 20 Apr 2004 21:37 PDT

See if the utility program found in the following thread on the TiVo
Underground forum of the TiVo community forum.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148629

If that utility does not work it appears that the drive can be
permanently locked.  If this is the case then the only way to rescue
the data would be to swap the circuit board with one from an identical
drive and back up the data immediatly.  This is not a terribly easy
procedure if you are not comfortable with electronics.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 22 Apr 2004 12:32 PDT

Thank you VASH for your detailed answer,

one of the first things i tried to run was Partition magic, but when
the program booted up it just gave me some error massage and closed
itself.

if i had to bet, i would say that what happend was the other choice you gave. 

My drive controller is failing and gives a locke disk error.

about the virus thing.. I really doubt thats what happend.
for a few reasons,

first of all, 
like i said before, i'm not an idiot (only when it comes to backing up :) )
i have an anti virus, a firewall, a router, i dont use kazaa or
outlook, i seriesly doubt a virus found its way to my pc.

second of all, 
there was this problem i mentioned at the begining of the question,
about my hard drive haveing trouble booting up and how it fixed itself
after a restart or two.

anyway, this indicates that i am facing somekind of hardware problem. 
or a problem caused by hardware.

anyway, 
I'm getting really close to freezing my hard drive :)

Western digital did not mention the option to send them the hard drive to me, 
and you have to remmember i live in israel, so western digital is
pretty far away from me.

in any case, sending the hard drive away to another continnent is not
the solution i'm looking for.

 ->   Phinn, 
what did you mean by "try to rip the whole disk" ?
i didnt quite catch that one,

now, 
I'm getting close to running a disk recovery service,
one of those mentioned here or perhaps a defrent one.
first of all, tell me, which one of these would you recommend, i dont
want to start spending my money on everything. (since i dont really
have money to spare)

http://www.grc.com/

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

http://www.binarybiz.com/hddrepair/index.php

and what exactly do these companies do? 
is this software better then regular disk recovery tools? cause i
allready used all of them..

anyway, I would just like to thank you all again for your answers...
looking forward to continuing this saga.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 23 Apr 2004 11:32 PDT

(since i allready answered you all in one clarafication, i will post this again...)

Thank you VASH for your detailed answer,

one of the first things i tried to run was Partition magic, but when
the program booted up it just gave me some error massage and closed
itself.

if i had to bet, i would say that what happend was the other choice you gave. 

My drive controller is failing and gives a locke disk error.

about the virus thing.. I really doubt thats what happend.
for a few reasons,

first of all, 
like i said before, i'm not an idiot (only when it comes to backing up :) )
i have an anti virus, a firewall, a router, i dont use kazaa or
outlook, i seriesly doubt a virus found its way to my pc.

second of all, 
there was this problem i mentioned at the begining of the question,
about my hard drive haveing trouble booting up and how it fixed itself
after a restart or two.

anyway, this indicates that i am facing somekind of hardware problem. 
or a problem caused by hardware.

anyway, 
I'm getting really close to freezing my hard drive :)

Western digital did not mention the option to send them the hard drive to me, 
and you have to remmember i live in israel, so western digital is
pretty far away from me.

in any case, sending the hard drive away to another continnent is not
the solution i'm looking for.

 ->   Phinn, 
what did you mean by "try to rip the whole disk" ?
i didnt quite catch that one,

now, 
I'm getting close to running a disk recovery service,
one of those mentioned here or perhaps a defrent one.
first of all, tell me, which one of these would you recommend, i dont
want to start spending my money on everything. (since i dont really
have money to spare)

http://www.grc.com/

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

http://www.binarybiz.com/hddrepair/index.php

and what exactly do these companies do? 
is this software better then regular disk recovery tools? cause i
allready used all of them..

anyway, I would just like to thank you all again for your answers...
looking forward to continuing this saga.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 24 Apr 2004 16:57 PDT

Dude,
that Doesn't really help...

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 30 Apr 2004 11:01 PDT

well then.. any other suggestions?

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 30 Apr 2004 13:04 PDT

sorry, no.. I got what he said.
the !$@#ing drive is still locked. I think I'll try the "Freezing" thing tonight.

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 03 May 2004 17:13 PDT

Unfortunetly no, i havent unlocked my drive. 
wish i have.
everything i tried didnt make any impact.

I think i'm going to freeze it...

---

Clarification of Question by yoe-ga on 16 May 2004 16:19 PDT

I did not yet manage to unlock my hard drive.
i think i will take it to a disk recovery lab soon.

With regards to the utility referenced by markoft-ga above, I would
highly recommend NOT using it on this drive. The utility uses a
specific passphrase to generate the lock/unlock condition, this
passphrase (oViT in hex, or TiVo backwards) is specific to drives that
are locked by a TiVo unit. You can look in the source code that
accompanies the utility to confirm this. Improper use of this utility
on a unit that is locked by some other system can cause permanent
locking of the drive.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

I have the answer for you. I am putting it here because, for some
reason, it won't let me post one. I am posting it here on the
assumption that you will pay me the $50.
   
Odds are you have a bad cluster on the disk. Had you told me a disk
scan would of confirmed that. Okay well what I really need to find out
is how messed up the drive is. Sounds like your MBR is messed up. MBR
stands for Master Boot Record, it also stores the main information for
your drive. The tools I want you to try is called Partition Magic. If
your FATs and P-Tables are still intact it will be able to access the
drive. If your P-Tables are gone well, your screwed as the only way to
access the drive is in a lab with controlled equipment. I'll do some
digging for you, but without a partition table and/or FAT your hard
drive is like the pages of every book in your local library cut out
and thrown in a big pile in a random order. You see a FAT (File
Allocation Table) stores a sort of card-catalog on the location of
every file on your disk. Without it, the drives just contents are
practically worthless. There are some other possibilities as well. If
your drive's controller is failing it might give a locked disk error.
In this case Western Digital should be able to replaces the controller
and send you back the drive with all your data, though no guarantees.
Another possibility is your hard drive truly is locked. This can be
done from some BIOS platforms or the result of a Virus. Unfortunately
if the drive is locked you need a passcode to unlock it or the system
will not mount it. Enter BIOS by pressing Delete key when your
computer first powers on. Look for anything related to disk locking.I
will warn, this does not sound good. The hopes of recovering your data
are slim without the assistance of a lab. Do not under any
circumstances open your drive as you will destroy the information when
dust particles come in contact with the platters. I know you said it,
but this is why backups are important

vash-ga:

Welcome to the Google Answers Service; I suggest that you read the
Google Answers FAQ to learn more about how this service works:

http://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html

As you will see from the FAQ, only Google Answers Researchers, who are
independent contractors selected by Google Answers to provide research
services to clients, are able to provide a formal Answer to a Question
and receive compensation for it. Any user of the service is welcome to
post a comment, as you have done, but again only Researchers can be
compensated for their work.

As for the comment you have provided, unfortunately if you will
carefully read the information that the Questioner, yoe-ga, has
provided above, and the ideas proposed by various Google Answers
Researchers that have attempted to help yoe-ga with this problem, you
will see that all of the possibilities you mention have already been
addressed and ruled out by yoe-ga. The drive is somehow locked, and no
Answer will be posted until a working solution is found.

If you have any other ideas that you think are worth developing as
part of the final solution, please feel free to post them, after
carefully reviewing the information already present in the Question to
make sure you are not restating something that the client has already
tried and reported as unhelpful.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

http://www.grc.com/ may help. Or you could use the dd in linux, to
just try to rip of the whole disk.
I hope this helps.

<><Phinn

grc.com is the home of Steve Gibson's SpinRite, which is an
awesome disk repair and recovery utility. Unfortunately, it
has the following limitations, and Steve is not in a hurry 
to update it:

"The rule for whether SpinRite will work for you is very
 simple but important: If MS-DOS is aware of the existence
 of a drive, then SpinRite will run on it. This does mean
 that if a drive is too damaged to be recognized by DOS,
 SpinRite will also fail to "see" it and cannot offer any
 help. In other words, you could have a drive that's still
 spinning but which neither DOS nor SpinRite can 'see.'"

...and...

"SpinRite currently only operates upon FAT format partitions.
 This does mean that it can run on OS/2 and NT FAT partitions
 when DOS is first booted on the system, and many thousands
 of our customers use SpinRite this way."

...and...

"We fully appreciate the need for additional file system
 support, but our development resource (Steve) is currently
 focused upon issues of Internet security and privacy.
 After Steve finishes work on our new Internet products
 he plans to turn his attention back to SpinRite and
 additional file system support."
http://www.grc.com/srQ&A.htm

Got it!

Yoav,

You got it?  Is your drive unlocked now?  If so, please do tell what
worked..!!  Many GA Researchers are silently following this thread to
see the final solution/resolution...

~~Cynthia-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Yoe-Ga,

please tell us how you managed to get pass the locked hard drive
protection. I have a very similar problem and would love to know what
you did to pass it and make your hard disk usable again.

Danny

Yoe-ga,
Please let us know how you unlocked your drive.

I DID NOT unlock my hard drive!

go to the forums on www.xbox-scene.com and do a search there. Xboxes
use the ATA security locking to stop people tampering with them. there
are ways around it of course but in your case I dont think there is. I
dont think you can just swap the circuit boards either as the security
info is stored on the platter. There are two passowrds that can be
set, the user password and the master password (you probably saw this
with atapwd which is an essential tool for xbox softmodders). Try
searching for virii that lock drives and maybe the password is
standard. Then you can use the tools from xbox-scene to first unlock,
then disable locking on the drive.

I should shut up now as all the info is on the xbox-scene forums
(especially under "software exploits"