I want to corrupt or damage a hard drive,how?

KdjaCL

Bought a laptop recently from Buy and Sell only to discover that along with the missing battery the hard drive is passworded (ibm googled it no way in hell it being bypassed) me not care me just want to format it.
I have a spare 4 GB 2.5 drive with win 98 on it so not pushed about ths.

But what i want to do is use the locked drive if possible, the password is on track 0 and that needs to go. Bios wont see this HD so any software solutions are defunct.

I dont care for the drive much its 20GB the laptop is for her.
I want a bigger HD but the boy in me wants to make this work.

Any ideas on how to corrupt a HD enough to blank out the 1st few tracks?
Using the HD in another laptop is useless HD pasword kicks in on that also.
Bios only needs to see it corrupt or not once it sees it ,it can then be formatted or whatever.

Answers/ideas on a postcard or post here.

As i dont really need it i gonna try anything

Kdjac

dub_dan

i heard before that if you rub a strong magnet near a hard drive you can clear everything off it? I'm probably wrong but just an idea..

Civilian_Target

You'll be wanting this then

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/

Woden

just a guess, but if you lash it into a motherboard which has no pci lock you can increase the fsb such that the pci frequency goes above 33mhz, at a certain frequency depending on the hdd it should corrupt or damage i think, think you have to overclock your processor to this though also

milltown

A degaussing chamber is the accepted method of rendering hdd data unrecoverable. If you are or know someone in college they may be able to locate one for you. Other than that I'd say take your time and leave it lying around as many different magnetic fields as you can think of.

Another thought: Are you sure the password is on the hard drive and not an EPROM of some sort?

Stephen

have you tried ringing whoever you bought it off and asking them if they know the password?

Practical

Originally posted by Stephen
have you tried ringing whoever you bought it off and asking them if they know the password?

Now that would be going too far!

Sir Random

Can't you just boot from a floppy and run fdisk?

Mutant_Fruit

have you tried ringing whoever you bought it off and asking them if they know the password?

that would be just going too far!

KdjaCL

I did call him but he wont answer, i wonder why.
Cant run fdisk or any software as if Bios dont see it ,its not there so nothing will work maybe norton commander but doubt it.
That Dban looks promising, magnets will erase data but i would need a really big one.

kdjac

BigEejit

Forget degaussing ... wrecks the electronics making the drive unusable .... did you think of getting a 2.5" to 3.5" converter from Komplett.ie for €13.31 ... I have one and used it to sort out a drive ... just stick the drive on one end, power and an IDE cable in the other and you can put it in another computer (booting off that computers HD) which should do the trick...

KdjaCL

Yay i did it

For future reference anyone needs to wipe a HD with IBMs hard drive protection this is how to do it.

Boot up Laptop with no floppy and HD disconnected when it finds nothing and says "no fixed HD on primary 0) quickly slide in the HD and floppy ( any of these IBM fitness tools, Dban thanks Civilian and it will find the HD ).
This bypasses all locks on the HD as BIos has not been told there is no HD (i been at this for 13 hours now) Dban or any HD utility will then find the HD and then wipee wipee.
Boot disks will not work 3rd party software of somfin linux based wil do the trick.


Me all happy now

kdjac

Ryaner

Can someone post a link this on ibm's site or some other site explaining how it actually works?
If the bios doesnt pick up the drive how does it boot from it?

Also dban is pretty sweet espec for secure deleting stuff. A better app for this is harddisk killer. Had it few years ago. takes about 3-5seconds to kill a drive from boot of the a drive.

KdjaCL

Originally posted by Ryaner
Can someone post a link this on ibm's site or some other site explaining how it actually works?
If the bios doesnt pick up the drive how does it boot from it?

Thats the thing it doesnt boot from it search google for "ibm hard drive protection" 1st few hits are from a MIT forum with detailed explanation of how it works, its so simple once locked the HD will never be opened by anyone with any software Some companies claim to have hardware that can open it. IBM say if you forget password dump the HD (well they would say that)


kdjac

Ryaner

Ok this is driving me nuts. All I'm finding is pages and pages about IBM's Active Protection System which is the motion detection system which stops the drive when the laptop is in use. And companys that will remove the pwd.
Can you post some direct links. I've typed exactly what you said into google as well as a number of things. Spent over an hour going thru google at this point which makes me look bad still not being able find things I know but this system interests me so links would help thanks.

KdjaCL

Lots o clever people talking about in a nutshell.
http://illuminati.stderr.org/pipermail/thinkpad/2004-February/007646.html

Have fun with yours

kdjac

Ryaner

Thanks man.
That'll do me for a while.