I have seen many posts about this and I get many questions about it, even llama is offering a reward if it can be done in a simple software method. No I know that there are many out there that say that the hdd is just a paper weight without the original eeprom and for all basic users this is true. For information you can look here; http://www.xbox-linux.org/docs/hdpassword.html
What are we dealing with, to understand a solution we must know what is actually happening. The hdd is lock has many different names, some are; ATA Password lock, Hard Drive lock, hdd security encryption (Even though there usually is no encryption, there is only one manufacturer that I know of who actually uses encryption and that is on their HPA but we can get to that later). Information is dumped on a secure area of the platter and in a chip such as the EEPROM but sometime an added chip is placed in the drive itself (laptop). (By the way, swapping the PCB board on the drives did not help)
These drive can be unlocked but you will need hardware as well as software to do it. There are companies that will do this for you, the prices range from $45 US to as high as $8,000.00 US so this is not a viable option (For example http://www.datarecoverybc.com/unlock.htm). You can possibly get equipment to do this;
http://www.vogon-forensic-hardware.co.uk/p...cracker-pod.php (More focused toward the laptop drives though.)
I have went through everything I can find about the topic, it has been an issue for over 3 years and those who know are still keeping thing under wraps. There are ways to jumper the PCB on the hdd to mimic the hardware needed and there was even some plans out for the laptop drives (Have not seen any for xbox drives though :( )
The software such as ATAPWD (Otherwise known as ATA Password Tool 1.1), SETMAX ATA and pretty much the rest still need the password to access the drive so you can see the contents. The theory of activating the drive with the manufacturers diagnostic software and then hot swapping might work for the TiVo but not for the xbox that I have seen.
Tracking the Master passwords are as easy as walking on water in a typhoon... some hints have been to just erase the drive using ATAPWD option;
QUOTE(bangor1001)
those with wd hard drives can try this to unlock them not sure if it works found it on another site.........
WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD
It MUST be in all capitals. I used the program ATAPWD. The commands are ERASE PREPARE, immediately followed by ERASE UNIT. It will not accept this password simply to unlock the drive. (Not if the drive was locked with the user password, as the XBox does) I successfully used this on a WD80EB, which is the standard XBox WD hard drive. Keep in mind, this will WIPE OUT all the data on the drive!! But, if you have a drive that is locked, and you don't care for the data on it, this is a way to make it useful again.
QUOTE(ranikolahdd)
Let just say thatmaster PWD foe Maxtor is
"Maxtor Security............"
It is a real thing tray me.
Nikola
Unfortunately none of these worked for my tests. The problem is that you need to access the HPA (Host Protected Area) to access the code but to do this you need the password. I have tried some of the forensic software (Encase, ProDiscover) to get the information but can't seem to find what I need. By the way, in Pro Discover there is an app called PARemover.exe which is to unlock ATA drives but it is focused mainly on the IBM laptop "Power On" lock and did not do anything for this issue.
I will update this as I can but this should give an idea for now about unlocking a hdd.
If any have other research or information on this please post, I would like to hear from you.