I have a Seagate ST310211A 10GB hard drive that is locked. I am unable to access the drive to reformat it. I found a technique that suggests that by reapplying the firmware a side effect is that the drive becomes unlocked. Successfully tested June 19, 2008.

The firmware is available at www.llamma.com as firmw.rar or at www.seagateunlock.com and click on Download Seagate Firmware Update for U5 series. The application I used is firmw.rar, I haven’t tested the other link. The firmw.rar archive contains four files (u5339.ovl, u5339.fls, u5339.crt, and sf.exe).

• Extract firmw.rar for u5339.ovl, u5339.fls, u5339.crt, and sf.exe
• Put the four files on a dos boot disc.
• Plug the Seagate hard drive into an available IDE channel.
• Execute the command SF -v -f U5339 -m U5

It will scan all channels for the drive and when it finds it, it will flash it with the same firmware that is already on it. This has a side effect of the drive becoming unlocked.

Note: To be absolutely cautious, I removed all other hard drives from all IDE channels in the event this utility may have a negative impact to the remaining hard drives.

After executing the command, this is the result.

  Seagate Firmware Update (236.5 KiB, 5,742 hits)

Note: I also understand that the Seagate master password is Seagate with 25 spaces. I haven’t tested this.

Source: www.llamma.com