Hi. I found this forum through a Google search for my issue, so I apologize if what I'm about to ask is inappropriate or just something you guys wouldn't know anything about. I have an old Iomega Ditto Easy 800 tape backup unit and some tapes from back in 1999 or so when I was using my dad's old piece of junk 75mhz running Win95 and a 4gb drive. When I got my new computer a year or two later, it came with WinXp on it, which wouldn't recognize the drive or run the software properly.. I forget which.. but it just wouldn't work, even under the "legacy hardware wizard" or whatever it's called. I searched online back then for weeks but couldn't find any solution, and I eventually forgot about it all and the unit and tapes I'd stored stuff on sat in a box.. Until recently, when I aquired a Win98 machine somebody was looking to discard and I managed to get the tape backup running and it seems to work fine with Win98, but... I'm faced with a new issue, which is that I password protected all the backups on one tape, due to the files being nude photos of personal friends and numerous private IM conversations that I didn't want family members to view if they got curious, and lo and behold, after 6 years I've forgotten the password I used and if I wrote it down somewhere I have no idea where and it's probably long since been thrown away or something. So I'm wondering if anybody here knows of a program or other method I could use to crack or bypass the password I put on there, or if anyone could perhaps direct me to another forum or website that would offer assistance, it would be much appreciated. I searched on Iomega's support site but didn't bother posting there since even the most basic questions about the Ditto product line were all ignored.. likely because Iomega apparently sold the whole tape drive division or whatever off to some other company way back in 1999, and then that company went out of business or something. Not sure what else to do at this point. :/ Again, thanks for your time, and any help.
Try this...as far as I can tell, it ONLY works with the external version of the drive (internal IDE doesn't, at least under Windows 95--it keept locking up the system) Here's how: 0) Make sure you have the Tools installed that let you password enable/disable. 1) Take a new disk that is not password protected, give it a read/write password (and remember it!) 2) Turn the SLEEP mode of the drive down to 1 minute. 3) Leaving the newly password protected disk in the drive, choose to "Unprotect until eject". 4) Wait 1 minute until you hear the drive click and spin down (the light should flash as well).[make sure nothing on the computer is accessing the drive--e.g. any explorer windows, etc..] 5) Straighten out a paperclip, and insert it into the tiny hole in the back of the drive, just about the parallel printer port connection area. Press in lightly and the disk should pop out. (DO NOT press the electronic eject button on the front..this will reset the drive's memory) 6) Put in the disk that you have forgotten the password on. 7) Choose to "Remove Protection", and enter in the password of the new disk that you assigned the password to in step 1. 8) Electronically eject (normally) and reinsert the now unprotected disk. [If you don't do this, the files will appear corrupted and cannot be read]. From here on out, your disk is unprotected and can be accessed like a disk that never had protection! Congratulations! You have now totally removed the protection from the disk! If you have more disks to remove protection from, electronically eject (normally) the current disk, and re-insert the password protected disk and go back to step 3 and repeat until step 8. This worked quite well for me!
