Recovering Data from A Password Protected Zip Disk

By Natasha Lilith

Since EVERYONE has been asking how to do this for the last 3 years... 
here you go. it REALLY works!

If you *EVER* forget the password for a ZIP disk, I finially figured out 
(with the help of some searching on the internet over the last 2 1/2 
years, mostly turning up nothing) how to recover the data (not even 
Iomega claims to know how!)

I figured it out last night. 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 kept 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!