Can I recover hidden data on MS DOS ?

ConfederateScott

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I have an old laptop computer from the 1980's. It used MS DOS. There are some files that were password protected on the computer and I can't remember the password or even how to get to the place where I would have to put in the password. I have forgotten everything except how to turn the thing on. Is there anyway to get the stuff off the hard drive? It's nothing really important just some personal stuff I wrote as a diary back in college that I'd like to access.
 

xcel730

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When you say get stuff off, are you referring to the password protected documents or everything?

I assume you don't want to go through floppies. Are you technical enough to open the computer and remove the hard drive from it? You could get an external IDE USB drive, hook up the hard drive, and copy it to your current computer.

For the password protected documents, what kind of files are they? If you want them bad enough, you could get search to see if they have password cracking applications to run a brute-force attack on it.
 

paulr

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Mar 29, 2003
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You mean a BIOS password? Yeah, simplest approach is just transplant the drive to another machine. But 1980's, hmm, that might predate ATA drives. What is the laptop's make and model?
 

matrixshaman

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There's almost always a way to recover stuff but it depends somewhat on encryption and how bad you want it. Some things can be easy and others will take a real pro to retrieve it. Some things would probably require special tools and programs - maybe even hardware. If you can give a lot more specific info it would help. Exact DOS version, what was used to password protect, whether the computer is password protected by the hardware (BIOS) -(this one is easy) or whether it is a document protection password (most of these aren't too hard) or a higher level encryption program made just for encryption of documents. You may be able to find some help on these things just by using Google as most older protections have cracks just for people who have your situation or have forgotten old password protected info. If the entire hard drive is encrypted that can be a bit more difficult but even some of those schemes have been hacked. Good luck on your search.
 

gorn

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Aug 31, 2004
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To answer your questions, yes the files/data can be recovered. It could be simple, if it's a BIOS password problem. If it is some type of encrypted file format that may make it a little more difficult. I use Passware for most normal password recovery. Being that the files are from early DOS programs they would be fairly easy to crack.
 

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