Hitachi hard drive password removal?

I upgraded the hard drives on my laptop and later sold it. the drives I took out of it were hooked up into another computer and now ask for a password. I never set any password for them when they were in the computer. Dell said that they sometimes get set up during installation of certain media software they install but nothing they suggested helped.

I am hoping that you can link me to a program that will clear or reset the firmware on it so that i can use the hard drive in another computer. It is an Hitachi SATA model# hts722016k9a300 160 Gig.

I have tried 2 different low level format utilities (Didn't work) and at least 3 different firmware programs that said the password had to be resolved before they would work. i dont care about any data, i just want to use the drives.

Please help me, Im going insane over this.

It was a Dell and I contacted them. they told me that once the drive is removed from the bios without clearing the password first there is no known way of clearing the drive that they know of and then referred me to hitachi that said i would have to get a data recovery guy to look at the drive. I talked to the data recovery experts around St.Louis and they all told me "sorry, it's a Hitachi, there is nothing they have been able to do to recover those drives" Then proceeded to tell me that we might be able to replace the circuit board but that it would most likly not work because the way Hitachi set this particular drive up it actually keeps the password settings hard coded on the drive surface in the boot strap of the drive.

since the drive isnt worth more that $40- $50 bucks I figured its not worth the headache and used it for target practice with my Desert Eagle 9mil (it held up better than expected, lol)