Hello fellow-listers!

Before I throw this laptop drive away (I've already rubbed a strong magnet
on it in frustration), I wonder if any of you know how to clear a Dell
password from the hard drive.  Of course, current owner buys from friend who
bought from friend and no one knows (or admits) to whom original owner was;
nonetheless, Dell will not help.  I "hotwired" successfully the laptop's
BIOS password; however, the hard drive's password is a real stumper.

It's a 20gb Hitachi -- used every utility I could come up with, I've set it
as slave on another system, BIOS recognizes; however, cannot read, write,
format, etc.

I've dropped to DOS and run FDISK as well as FDISK /mbr.  FDISK reports no
drive even though I can see it in BIOS.

I've been to just about every site from the black hats to the white and it
seems the consensus is:   send it in to company that specializes in data
recovery for the tune of 100 to 150 dollars -- I don't care about the data,
just want a formattable, 20gb drive.

Thaniks in advance,
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