# How to Unlock a WD Hard Drive?



## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

I have a Western Digital 500GB SATA hard drive that I pulled from a Dish DVR box, and I guess that it is locked. Because it doesnt show on the bios or either in device manager. Does anyone know how to unlock it?


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## OzzmanFloyd120 (Nov 6, 2008)

First, take off any jumpers that are on the drive, if it then doesn't show in bios you may have a dead HDD on your hands. Did it work in the DVR before you pulled it?


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

OzzmanFloyd120 said:


> First, take off any jumpers that are on the drive, if it then doesn't show in bios you may have a dead HDD on your hands. Did it work in the DVR before you pulled it?



Yeah it was. I unplugged it and put it in the moving truck the next day and on Monday I pulled it and now it doesn't show on my PC/BIOS.


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## OzzmanFloyd120 (Nov 6, 2008)

Put it back into the DVR and see if it works. The problem might just be that it has an obscure bios designed specifically for DVR that your PC can't recognise.


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 6, 2008)

How was it packed?  It could have been damaged in transit from excessive physical shock or electrostatic discharge (ESD).

When it is plugged in, can you feel it spin up?  Does it vibrate at all?


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 6, 2008)

It's not a free service but take a peak. http://www.hddunlock.com/


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> How was it packed?  It could have been damaged in transit from excessive physical shock or electrostatic discharge (ESD).
> 
> When it is plugged in, can you feel it spin up?  Does it vibrate at all?



Packed good.

And yeah it starts to spin and vibrates.


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 6, 2008)

Oh also see if it can get recognized by a dos bootable partition manager.


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## FR@NK (Nov 6, 2008)

Goto the western digital website and type in the serial number to see if the drive has a valid warranty remaining.


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> Oh also see if it can get recognized by a dos bootable partition manager.



Um...Ok? Explain how to do please?


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## OzzmanFloyd120 (Nov 6, 2008)

Also in windows go to control panel/administrative tools/computer managment/disk managment and see if the drive is physically there, it might just have a partition that your computer can't read.


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

FR@NK said:


> Goto the western digital website and type in the serial number to see if the drive has a valid warranty remaining.



So I could get a warranty on a product that I didnt buy, just ripped from a system.


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 6, 2008)

Link says it all give a quick read.

http://www.partition-tool.com/partition-magic/Partition-Magic-bootable.htm



@Ozzman

It needs to be unlocked before you can do any operations.


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 6, 2008)

I wouldn't trust the erase method but POST credentials to authenticate the hard drive does sound plausible if not likely.  Personally, I'd give it a try.


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

OzzmanFloyd120 said:


> Also in windows go to control panel/administrative tools/computer managment/disk managment and see if the drive is physically there, it might just have a partition that your computer can't read.



Doenst show in the Disk Management.


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 6, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> You should be able to use a program called ATAPWD (http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html) in conjunction with using this password (in all CAPS):
> 
> WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD
> 
> ...



In case you missed it Castiel.


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> In case you missed it Castiel.



Yeah Got it.


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## BrooksyX (Nov 6, 2008)

Castiel said:


> So I could get a warranty on a product that I didnt buy, just ripped from a system.



No you couldn't. WD doesn't usually honor warranties on oem products that are sold from 3rd party manufacturers. You have to get a warranty from the company that sold the product and since you opened the DVR sounds like the warranty would be void ayways.


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## Castiel (Nov 6, 2008)

BrooksyX said:


> No you couldn't. WD doesn't usually honor warranties on oem products that are sold from 3rd party manufacturers. You have to get a warranty from the company that sold the product and since you opened the DVR sounds like the warranty would be void ayways.



Yeap.


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