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November 21st, 2008 22:00

Inspiron 9300 HDD password

Dear All,

I have a DELL inspiron 9300 which has died completely. One day a couple of water drops fell on the keyboard then I saw some wierd colors on the screen and after that, the monitor remained black. I ordered a replacement video card and installed it but nothing still black.

I declared my laptop as useless but, I really wanted the data on the harddisk. I had a harddisk password set on this Dell laptop and I am 110% sure what the password is.

I have another laptop Compaq nx9010 which I inserted the dell (Hitachi) hard disk in it for me to retrieve the data. And as I suspected it prompts me for the drivelock password. But when I insert the password it prompts me that the password is not correct. That is strange since that I am 110% sure what the password is.

Q1. Is it that this is another laptop that it would not recognise the dell HDD password?

Q2. Is there another way I can reset\remove this password?

 

Regards,

 

Dwayne

93 Posts

November 22nd, 2008 09:00

If you are using the actual Drivelock program you might have better luck checking with them for information.  http://www.drivelock.com/default.aspx 

March 26th, 2015 05:00

I don't think the OP is using DriveLock, which is a software solution. He said the hard disk appears locked when it's installed in a different laptop.

I have exactly the same problem with a DELL E6410 - it incurred water damage and won't boot. The SSD disk was locked with a password on that laptop.

From what I've read, DELL can help with your password if you prove you're the original owner, or if you transfer ownership. But what exactly does that mean? Can you get back the data? Can they help if the original laptop is defective?

  1. Is it possible to recover the data if the hard disk is inserted in another laptop, and I know the password? Or is the hard disk tied to the laptop it was "locked" in?
  2. Let's say I don't care about the data, but I want to use the SSD. How can I do that?

9 Legend

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87.5K Posts

March 26th, 2015 05:00

While Dell can help you remove the password from the system (i.e., the BIOS portion of the password), if you've lost the actual hard drive password, even Dell can't remove that.  If you need the data on the drives, you will need to send the drives out to a recovery service that has the tools to remove the password and retrieve the data.  

If the drives are in otherwise working order, this should cost a couple of hundred dollars a drive depending on whether you just need the drives unlocked, or the data recovered and verified.  Most of the major drive recovery services (such as Gillware, Kroll Ontrack, Drive Savers, etc.) can do this.

10 Elder

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46K Posts

March 26th, 2015 14:00

This thread has been locked due to it's age, if you have a similar issue, please use the 'New Post' feature at the top of this page and start a new thread.

Bev. 

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