WD2500 & WD2500JS Internal Drives Locked, Cannot Unlock

[d1k]

Hello,
I did a search and did not see anything related to locked Internal drives so here we go.

I purchased a box of 20 x 250GB Western Digital Internal hard disk drives, model numbers WD2500 and WD2500JS, off of ebay and I’m pretty sure I just got ripped off. Using the Western Digital Data Life Guard software the drives scan error free but show that they are locked, every single one of them, I cannot format them and/or use them at all.

I have searched on-line about ways to unlock these suckers, the “master password” thing didn’t work, this Smartware for Windows didn’t help, cannot flash new firmware to them at all. I see no other way to unlock these things, can someone please help me out here?

[ArMak]

Hello,

As far as i know, internal drives do not have password protection. Perhaps this could be done by a computer.

[Myron]

You sure? In my computer I have a Hitachi drive and I can assign a password to it which renders it useless to any hardware that can’t give it the right password. I’m not sure if WD drives are capable of such a password lock.

[d1k]

Can any Western Digital reps help out here please? How can I unlock these drives?