How to unlock a hard drive

swbruce21

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Jan 14, 2011
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I bought a couple of expensive IDE Automotive Grade hard drives on ebay that came from from MyGig RBZ nav units. I didn't know this particular nav unit uses a password on the drive. I was planning on re-imaging the drives for other MyGig models but the drive is innaccesable.

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I found the solution: I was able to unlock the 2 Toshiba Navigation Hard Drives so I am able to use them on other Nav systems.

Basics:
-Boot into MHDD CD
-Select your drive
-Type "unlock" then provide drive manufacturer's master password.
-Type "dispwd" (to disable password protection) then provide the drive manufacturer's master password.

For example the Manufacturer Master Password for Toshiba drives is 32 spaces - yes, hit the space bar 32 times and the drive is unlocked.

Download MHDD with this link:
http://

Then find the Master Password for you manufacturer and follow the Instruction here.
http://

Hardware Prerequisite . . the drive has to be connected directly to the IDE controller on your computer; a USB adaptor will not work. Thinkpads with IDE drives don't work because they won't boot into the MHDD CD if there is a password protected drive connected.

My final solution for a PC to run MHDD . . some 5 year old Dell workstations that use SATA hard drives still have a single IDE port on the mother board for the DVD drive. I used a 3.5 to 2.5 ide adaptor availabe at ebay/amazon/MicroCenter. Connected the target 2.5" IDE drive to the Dell IDE port on the motherboard. Attached a SATA CD drive to boot the MHDD CD.
 

swbruce21

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Jan 14, 2011
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18,560


We believe the security code is the same for all MyGig RBZ systems, so it is not information availabe to owners, users etc. I am shipping the drives to a guy that owns an RBZ system to see if they work in his vehicle to test that theory.

Some other Nav systems use security codes pinned to the VIN, but thats an application level security code, nothing to do with accessing the hard drive.

But your answer suggests that locked drives cannot be unlocked. I remember installing different firmware on a Thinkpad hard drive to stop an IBM nag screen on some Thinkpad models if you didn't uses an IBM branded hard drive.

Does apply a hard drive firmware update to a locked drive, unlock it ?