WD DVR SATA HDD not showing up in BIOS?
 

Hey guys, I just got moved in to a new town, and Dish Network doesnt provide server where I live so I am having to get Charter. So I took my old Dish DVR apart and found that it had a 500GB SATA Western Digital hard drive and I took it out and I was going to use it in my pc.

Problem: When booted my computer up with it in there it didn't show in the BIOS or didn't come up in the start up screens, and it wasn't in My Computer either. So I am wandering is there like some block on the hard drive to where you aren't able to use it on PC's? Have anyone else done this? I really want to use it because I am running out of HD space. What could be going on? And I have no other computers to try on to see if it works on there.

Make sure your sata port is set to IDE in the bios if its set to raid it might not be detected until you configure an array

Go to administrative tools....Then computer management and then disc management...if you have it connected correctly it should show up there..there you can format it and use.

dvr hdd's have special partitions adn stuff that prevent them from being used with comps... try and zero the drive and see if it'll work, otherwise you're out of luck.

I do have it set to IDE and not RAID and it still doesn't show up.

I doesn't show up there either.

And how can I zero the drive if it doesn't show up anywhere?

And now I just have it plugged in and everything and in the bios where the device is it is blank, and it doesnt show the name of the drive or the no device, just blank.

It may be possible the drive is locked to the DVR. Possibly the same security feature as an Original Xbox if you attempt to upgrade/replace the hdd. Does the drive show in Windows' device manager?

Nope

Your S O L then i would say... Cant think of any other way to get in there!!

Hey I was talking to a friend about this and he said that it could be locked. Do you know how to unlock one? You can do something in DOS?

You need to know exactly what the master password is to unlock it. But it should show in device manager in Windows regardless.

Well see it doesn't. But when I plugged it in a Regular SATA port on my mobo, in the bios it didn't show up but just a blank in that port spot in the BIOS. Do you know what that is meaning?

Refer to your other thread for my best suggestion.

Yeah, I am having both up so one is for help to get it showing and the other for when It does show up I have help to know how to unlock it, if I have to.

You should be able to use a program called ATAPWD (http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html) in conjunction with using this password (in all CAPS):

WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD

Try that out and report back.

EDIT: Also Ultimate Boot CD has ATAPWD on it in case you need a bootable cd and dont have floppy or a flash drive.