Thinkpads Forum

Have the chance to get a t410 fordirt cheap. The owner says he bought at a surplus sale only to find it had a HDD PW. My question is can I simply throw in my own HDD and rebuild the system or will i still be promtted for a HDD PW with a new drive?

Here is the official Lenovo info on the subject:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/researc ... AST-3JXNTY

stopdrpnro wrote:... can I simply throw in my own HDD and rebuild the system ...

Yes -- the HDD password is drive-dependent, not machine-dependent. [Note: I have not tried it using a T410 BIOS, but I see no reason to believe it is different in this regard from any other recent Thinkpad BIOS.]

I assume you are talking about a HDD password that has been set using the BIOS? If so you should just be able to change the drive no problem. If the password has been set using software such as DESLock then you can just format the drive with an external source. If you have power on password or BIOS lock password then you are pretty much up the creek without a paddle. In the older Thinkpads you used to be able to read the password off the security chip using a home made kit but it was a lot of hassle, these days I believe you have to replace the motherboard!

And that's assuming it really is only a hard drive password, and not a power-on password, or both.