HardDisk Password recovery.

[Joseph Forbes <jftitan () gmail com>]

 I have a problem that happens to be absolutely annoying in the since
that I cannot find the solution. either google, or other security
forums all seem to say to take this HDD to a Data Recovery.

  What has happened is that one of the employees of the contract
company I work for has password locked her notebook (Dell Latitude
LS). Story told is that she wanted to make sure if the notebook was to
be stolen or lost no one could get the data off of it. The usual. and
like always, a new password, but not remembering what it was later on.

  I was able to reset the BIOS, because at the time I thought the
password was BIOS set, but after I pulled the battery that is when I
reliazed the password placed on the hardware was firmware encoded.

 So far i have been able to get leads towards downloading the
UltimateBootCD to use the ATA Harddrive password recovery tool, but
because the harddrive is locked the software won't touch the drive
with a ten foot pole. I have tried placing the HDD on an adaptor and
putting it into one of my desktop machines, but the drive is locked
before I even pass POST.

So I am wondering what many others I have found in the same situation
is, if professional data recovery businesses can
recover/forensic/unlock harddrives, then there has got to be a way to
recover this hard drive.

This is a Hitachi/IBM 6.01GB HDD (IBM-DARA-206000) in a Dell Latitude
LS PP01S. Both of which are well out of the warranty. Other than
spending money on a new HDD for more than what the notebook is worth.
It would be much better, (and ego boosting for me) to get this drive
unlocked. I have been at this for 2 days, but I'm still looking for
recommendations online, so if no one has any ideas, I will hopefully
be able to follow up

-- 
Joseph Forbes  "Don't Forget to Salt the Fries!"
Network Security Administrator
SwapNEtwork eXtreme, Inc. 
jftitan () satx rr com (jftitan () swapnetx com)
cell 210.834.3450 fax 775.415.9280