8/23    Hi motd.  I recently got a Dell Latitude D610 from work.  There is a
        "Hard Drive Password" feature in BIOS.  After setting it, now every
        time I boot it asks me for this before it loads the OS.
        Does anyone know if this password is stored on the drive or on the
        mobo?  E.g., if the latter, I can just put the drive in an external
        enclosure and access all files.  Thanks.  I suspect the latter.
        Okay, I see here it looks like the former:
        http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1942031.php
        \_ Depends on the make & model.  A lot of mfgrs deal with the password
           with a combination of bios and either an eeprom or a reserved area
           on the drive.  Generally it's some variant of the bios being a
           sort of "handler" for the password info which is stored elsewhere.
           The good news is, there are ways of breaking this with some
           understanding of electronics diagrams and a degree of proficiency
           with a soldering iron.  With some IBMs, for example, you need to
           nuke the password on the particular laptop it was set on before you
           can use it for something else (unless of course you break it, which
           is difficult-but-not-impossible.)  I did some research on this a
           while ago for a project, but my info may be out of date.  -John
           \_ fyi, I downloaded the spec doc for the Hitachi 5K80 Travelstar,
              and there's a whole section on this, which leads with:  "With a
              device lock password, a user can prevent unauthorized access to a
              device even if it is removed from the computer."  It sounds like
           \_ fyi, I downloaded the spec doc for the Hitachi 7K100 Travelstar,
              and there's oodles about password set/clear/change.  Presumably
              this is all stored on the HD.
              Upon further reading, it looks like the drive supports a Master
              Password and User Password.  Presumably the Master Password is
              known only to Dell and is different for different service tags,
              and is used to unlock the drive if the user forgets the User
              Password that he or she used to lock the drive.
              Unfortunately it looks like all you need is a keygen program
              to get the Master Password for Dell Latitudes:
              http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18780-pg4.html&pp=20
              Doh! -op
              I do agree that if you speak with Dell they'll probably tell
              you a special way of clearing the "Hard Drive Password" if
              you authenticate with them completely.  And DriveSavers probably
              knows exactly how to do it without any trouble.
              After googling for a while, it looks like this is the only way to
              clear the hard drive password:  http://dp.allhyper.com
              Much easier to clear the non-hard-drive passwords. -op
              \_ OK the mechanism I found consisted of soldering together a
                 bit of electronic gymcrackery according to a set of wiring
                 specs I found, which would slurp the password hash off the
                 laptop via serial and let you dump it on a PC in order to
                 crack it.  I'd be very interested in what you find, so if you
                 would like to look at the bit of poking around that I did,
                 drop me a mail (non-bouncing email in my .plan)  -John
                 \_ Oh, it's just the link I posted -- run the keygen
                    against the reported hard drive code, obtain the password
                    which clears the other passwords.  Apparently another
                    mechanism involves a paperclip shorting some pins. -op
              \_ Good news.  That keygen only works for old service tags
                 (ending with extension -D35B).  Then, I e-mailed the owner of
                 the document that describes how to unlock passwords using
                 a paperclip (shorting some pins).  He says his method is
                 only for the BIOS passwords, and there is nothing he knows
                 of that can unlock the "hard drive password".  Yay. -op
                 \_ See above, offer still stands (dunno if it'll be of any use
                    but might give you some pointers of where to look.)  -John