I retrieved a hard drive from my scrap pile and put it in a machine that I am refurbishing. I have a collection of hard drives from company machines that have been upgraded, cast offs, hand-me-downs, etc. So I have no idea where it came from or the previous owner.

I get this message upon boot-up which I have never seen before: HDD locked, enter password. The system auto-detects the HDD and both CD drives and then stops with the password prompt. There's no way to enter the setup to look there and I can't boot to a CD or floppy disk. I already took the battery out and put it back in. Any ideas?

Got a boat?

That drive is pretty much useless...

Drives that can be password protected write the password to the drive's firmware, pretty much preventing normal means of removal.

You could try zero filling it in case it is drive encryption software that is asking for the pw, but if you can't boot to a floppy or CD that doesn't help. And if the password is in the firmware as MJC said then there is nothing you can do but take it back to the scrap pile. ;)