hard drive locked

thefish · 13 Jan 2023 at 04:58

basically I put a password on a hard drive in the bios of an asrock z790 motherboard,the board died and I bought an msi z790 board and I can't access the hard drive,the drive does show up in disk management as offline and unallocated but I can't do nothing with it.i know my password but can't figure out how to get my drive back .its a wd gold 6tb drive

Cyber-Mav · 13 Jan 2023 at 09:31

iff its offline in diskmanagement then bring it online and assign drive letter?

thefish · 13 Jan 2023 at 10:54

it won't go online in diskmanagement

Glanza · 13 Jan 2023 at 11:10

Can you post a picture of your disk management?

thefish · 13 Jan 2023 at 21:07

AthlonXP1800 · 13 Jan 2023 at 23:34

Try disconnect all hard disks cable and connected locked hard drive and boot it then screen should ask you to enter the password to unlock hard drive.

Rroff · 13 Jan 2023 at 23:46

Does the MSI board have the HDD Password feature in the BIOS? if not you might be in a bit of a messy situation. There are 3rd party tools which can attempt to brute force past the security but results may vary - if you are unlucky it might be encrypted with a controller specific key, which may require the exact same model of board to unlock it or even specific to the previous motherboard's controller.

EDIT: Usually BIOS password locks aren't full disk encryption so there are various ways to get the files back though it might necessitate swapping the PCB out on the drive. If you are unlucky though the drive might be a self-encrypting variant.

thefish · 14 Jan 2023 at 00:52

drive is a wd gold

AthlonXP1800 · 14 Jan 2023 at 06:04

I watched youtube clips of Asrock Z790 BIOS overlook found Security tab has HDD Security Configuration and MSI Z790 BIOS overlook found Settings/Security but it did not have HDD Security Configuration.

So I suggest you to RMA ASrock Z790 motherboard and get new replacement then you can enter BIOS to use HDD Security Configuration to unlock your WD Gold hard drive.