Thinkpads Forum

Hi there,

I'm having difficulty removing a known password from the HDD installed in a 14.1" T61. I've tried to use the following method recommended by Lenovo http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... SMS-3PWHTZ.

However, this does not seem to work for me as the T61 won't accept a password followed by a space. In addition, in the BIOS security menu, the HDD password section has been greyed out so that I can't change or remove the HDD password. The BIOS version is 2.26.

I was planning to transfer this HDD to an external closure but I can't seem to access it once has been removed from the T61 (naturally expected).

Could someone please help?

Update:

It appears to be a BIOS issue. The later 2.27 BIOS notes the following on the Lenovo website:

Version 7LETC7WW (2.27-1.08)

* (New) Added support for 1600x900 screen resolution on an external display.
* (New) Added support for a SanDisk SSD.
* (Fix) Fixed an issue that might not be able to set HDP(HardDisk Password) by SRCMOS.

Should be right to use the existing HDD in an external enclosure now.

Just had similar experience with the fleet of W500 we have here...

Assumptions:
1. You have set up HDD password(s)
2. You've moved the HDD to another TP.
3. You can access the content of the HDD with the password you had earlier
4. The HDD password section on the new TP is now greyed out.

Trawling the net yielded very little. Luckily we have a bunch of same TP here so I was able to do some testing... It turns out you can ONLY clear/change the password when the HDD is attached to the same TP that the password was originally set! i.e. once we plugged the HDD back into the original TP the bios option became editable again.

This is not a nice feature as we use the same password across the fleet and move the HDDs around due to repairs etc... You'd think it'll work across the fleet if you had the same supervisor pass etc.....

But at least now we know. Clear the HDD pass before you swap out. But that still leaves you the situation when the mobo is dead and you can use that TP to clear the pass.....