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, [log in to unmask] The NOSPIN Group is now accepting donations to help defer the costs of providing PCBUILD and our website. Visit http://freepctech.com to donate using PAYPAL