Up for Grabbs!  
10 Xbox Hard Drives or
$100 In Cash or
a custom Xbox Console or
$200 in products from Llamma's Shop

Contest has been won!

Click Here For How To!

Important: read this section first!  If this was an easy question I would not be putting up a reward for it.  I would already have shared it with you on the site.  The answer is not at the two most popular links I get in my mail

 http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/pc-hdd.php
or
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?do=article&id=7&page=1

We are looking for a software solution, we have a hard ware solution available, de-soldering the EPROM from the Motherboard, swapping to another.  This require de-soldiering a tiny chip, Not much fun nor can it be done easily, and again it does not meet the criteria of unlocking while not knowing the password, the EPROM holds the password.

The task:

Unlock an IDE hard drive set in Max Security mode while not knowing the correct password. This ATA locking standard is implemented in the hard disc firmware and renders the drive useless (will not respond to normal ATA commands) unless the drive is provided the proper password first.

If you would like to review the ATA specifications yourself, please refer to:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/d1153r17.pdf

Page 47 of the PDF document (Document page 30) describes the basics of ATA locking.

Page 160 of the PDF document (Document page 144) describes the device registers and ATA subsystem commands used to interface with the locking features.

6/27/04 Still looking for a solution and doubled the prizes. 

2/24/04 Some updates

Dedicated thread for unlocking drives in our forum http://forums.llamma.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=3216#3216

Other sites

http://xbx.networkboy.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22&mode=nested&order=0&thold=-1

http://xbx.networkboy.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6&mode=nested&order=0&thold=-1

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_20423260.html#10002013

Text of an email that did not work for me but has promise:

"...when you don't know the password.

I found a method to do this, and I thought I might share it with you...

1. Find a Windows XP (or 2000, probably) machine with IDE. Plug the

locked drive into the power, but not the IDE, while the computer is off.

2. Power on. It'll boot normally (my computer wouldn't start with a

locked drive in the IDE chain).

3. Plug in the IDE, then use Device Manager to look for new devices

until it finds the drive. Don't worry, it won't fry anything.

4. Use LiveInfo ( http://www.team-assembly.com/downloads/ ) to find the

drive's password. Print it out.

5. Go to DOS and use HDUNLOCK

( http://dwl.xbox-scene.net/~xbox/xbox-scene/tools/harddrive/hddunlock.zip ).

Enter the password for the drive. It'll say that it succeeded even if

it's the wrong password, so make sure you put it in correctly.

6. Use HDDISABL (same archive) and enter the same password. It will

give you an error if you have the wrong password.

Et voila.

This is not my method; I found it searching through the xbox-scene

forums. I can't remember who I got it from.

I haven't tried it on any other hardware than my own, and only once.

There's a chance it was a fluke, and I'll not tempt fate by locking it

with a garbage password again... But you probably have a number of

drives you thought were paperweights. Give this a shot, it might work.

-Phillip"

I attempted the above procedure on two seagate drives and it did give me a password but when I attempted the unlock procedure I got a hard drive timeout message.

12/21/03 Interesting site with some info and a utility http://www.sandersonforensics.co.uk/manual.htm#Obtaining%20drive%20information

Updates 4/22/03
Still looking for an answer before mailing me with your idea be sure you understand what the following bullets mean

• It cannot "Just be Formatted"
• I cannot do the cable swap or use the board to unlock it.
• I don't want to de-solder the EPROM from either the board or the drive.
• Drive is locked in Max Security mode (only user pass will unlock, there is no master pass)
• LiveInfo Beta 2 will not supply the proper password
• Config Magic cannot unlock unless it has a board with the password, my drives do not fit this description.

Be the first to tell me how to unlock an Xbox Hard Drive when the password is not available and the board it was attached to is dead.  Formatting is fine I am not interested in the software in any way, I'm just trying to reclaim some otherwise useless hardware to fill all my PC's.

Hint: You probably wont find the answer searching the internet, I'm pretty good at finding little gems of information on the web but in this case I came up empty.  The drive is locked in Max Security mode and there is no master password.

If the answer is anywhere it is probably at a message board or a buddy that works/has friends at a data recovery service business.  

The password is not, TEAMASSEMBLY, Config Magic can only unlock a drive when connected to a board that knows the password.  If you know that to be untrue let me know how to step through it and the prize is yours.  Again, the drives are without a working motherboard and the password is not known.

Here are links to the specs of each drive

Seagate 10GB
Model number ST310211A
P/N: 9R4005-279
Technical Specs  Manual.PDF

Western Digital 9GB
Model number WD80EB-00CGH0
WD P/N: WD80EB-00CGH0  
No listing at the Western Digital site.

None of the tools at the manufacturer sites are able to zero fill the drive.  The closest was the Seagate Disk Wizard witch would start and get to 1% after 3 days of running at witch time I canceled, the drive had still not been written enough to be unlocked.

Nothing is impossible, if one of these drives were sent to a data recovery specialist they would be able to get those lines of code and revive our dormant drives.  At the very least it should be possible to blank the entire drive and reformat so the Llamma can fill up all 16 empty IDE channels in the computer room

Conditions: 

1. Step me through a repeatable process to unlock/format an Xbox drive. 
2. Be the first - In the event that two people come up with the same correct answer or two answers that are different but successful the easier of the two options will be declared the winner at my discretion.