Slashdot Mirror
DriveLock on Compaq/HP Laptops?
whois asks: "I just purchased a new Compaq laptop and noticed a feature in the BIOS called 'DriveLock'. It locks the drive so a password has to be entered on startup. If you take the drive out and put it in a system without a drivelock BIOS, the system can't boot from the drive. There is very little information on the web about this feature. Most people talk about what happens if you lose your password (buy a new drive) and what happens if you want to reuse the drive in other machines (you can't). What I want to know is the tech specs on this. Is it security through obscurity, and just sets a password in the drive BIOS, or is it doing encryption in hardware? My guess is it's the former, but I'm submitting to find out if anyone knows the real story. Here is an HP doc that mentions it in passing." According to information provided by the included links, this "feature" isn't something you can disable, either. Are we likely to see more manufacturers tie hardware together like this, in the future?
Then why wouldn't the drive work in another machine? It's obviously something more than that, although I doubt it's full drive encryption as that would be slow.
I don't think its something that a new repartitioning (fdisk et al) cannot disable. They probably encode / encrypt the boot sector, but that can be fixed with fdisk. Saying that the drive is not usable in other computers is incorrect.
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
Sounds like the same ATA standard passwords that the XBOX uses. See for example http://www.siliconice.net/XBOX/Guides/hdd_password .shtml
BalamIt is most likely just using the ATA password feature present on most ATA drives. Some mfrs don't implement them, but alot do.
XBOX, UltimateTV and other systems use this to stop you from accessing the drive.
I beleive there is two passwords for the drive, an OEM password and a user password.
nothing magical here folks..
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Since ATA-4, IIRC, there has been a password call to which drives will respond. The password locatoin is not accessable to the user, could be stored in FLASH on the HDD board or on the disc proper depending on the mfg. Most drivres give you x tries (apx 4???) and then lock-up forever. I'm sure that there is a back door, but don't expect to get it unless you live in San Jose and buy lots of pizza & bear for HDD firmware engineers. The one flaw in the system is that it is easy to sniff the ATA bus and read the password when it is written. I assume that this is the flaw for x-box.
My T20 has this drive locking feature and I've been told the same thing - do NOT forget the password or you can toss the drive. When I worked at Intel drives occasionally got tossed when people forgot their HD passwords. They did not attempt a recovery of any sort.
I *think* the 600-series IBM laptops also supported this feature, although I wouldn't swear to it.
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
The Hard Disk ATA Standard allows for a hard rive to be locked, and unlocked. The passwords (user, and master) are not on the platter, but stored in a register on the controller board. The logic sequence on boot up is to check if the drive is locked, and if it is it won't unlock the drive until the proper command, then the password is sent to the drive.
Inspiron 8600: Pretty good, not as great performance or battery-life wise, but if you're going to be using the computer plugged in a lot then this is negligible. Cost is sig. lower than T40.
Dunno about the HPaq, but if you've ever bought a computer from HP or Compaq then you know what to do: back away slowly and reach for your cross.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Sitting on my workbench right now is an old IBM thinkpad with the hard drive password locked. If this password were to be lost, I would have two options:
1) Send the drive out to be "unlocked" by IBM (at great expense I may add)
2) Throw it away
Those would be my options. Luckily I have the password so everything is fine. This is an old feature that it seems a lot of people have either forgotten or are too new to remember.
Cliff H
P.S. Just for future reference, it's a 760E. :)
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
So, if the passwords are really in a register on the controller board, swapping the platters with an identical drive should enable you to access your data, right? This assumes some sort of NVRAM on the controller board.
If the lock is written on the platters themselves, then I guess you're out of luck unless you know somebody with a rogue controller that'll ignore or overwrite the lock. I expect the manufacturer and Ontrack have these. If I were building HDDs this way, I'd have an undocumented unlock command.
Swapping platters seems costly, but as cheap as disks are these days, your data is likely the most valuable thing.
Actually if the data is in a register on the controller, you might be able to reset the NVRAM with some hardware hacking, but you'd probably kill any firmware too, rendering the controller even less functional.I'm just assuming that the disk is a paperweight anyway.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
My friend gave me an HD that he didn't need anymore, and it had a password set. My laptop did not recognize the drive when I didn't enter the password and my friend didn't remember his password.
Just by dumb luck, I happen to have an external USB enclosure and I figured what the hell. I put the drive in this and it worked fine as an external drive. However no amount of fdisk'ing, low level formatting or anything would remove the password. Oh well, it makes for a great Ghost'ing/portable hd that works (with fat16 or fat32) with just about every major OS out there.
I believe it stores the information in some sort of NVRAM on the hard disk. Using a dumber implementation of IDE (I.E. the USB Enclosure) got around it, so it must require the BIOS to honor the password stored in NVRAM. Don't know much else.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
I received some toshiba(I think) laptop hdd's one time and they all were locked from toshiba. I called toshiba tech support and could never get it through their heads that these were hdd passwords and not CMOS/BIOS password problem. They kept telling me to just remove the battery. Needless to say, I just returned to reseller for another brand.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
they are not known for fabuloso linux compat. but they're not bad, and they have effing great (high-limit but nasty interest) financing deals. That's what swayed me- I am low on cash due to purchase of a bunch of airplane tickets, but wanted to give a few computers to my [broth,sist]er in-law. They hooked me up through small-biz financing (just give ssn as tax ID) with 6500usd credit line... and I have a 6-month credit history. Maybe you can get a better box than you thought.
knee-jerk? check. post? check. okay, time to read the article.
All it does is lock the hardware and require a password! That's security by obscurity and is a bad thing!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It seems to be the ATA password. As it can be enabled and disabled and set at will, there is no encryption of the data stored on the maginetic surface itself, otherwise the disk would need awful lot of time to encrypt/decrypt everything. As most disks have only the head amplifiers inside the box with the platters and heads, I suppose the password itself will be located in some chip on the circuitboard, which is exchangeable. I'd love if someone here would try to swap the boards between passworded and unpassworded disk of the same type and report if the lock moved too. The password itself could be maybe disabled as well, but that would probably require a good amount of luck (the data would have to travel through one of the accessible traces on the board, then they can be zeroed at the right moment by pulling the bus to L, and the drive then can think it has zero-length password; this works for many motherboards where the BIOS password is located in an EEPROM chip, usually a 24C08). The concrete approach will be very vendor-specific here, and good luck if everything including the NVRAM is inside one of the big flat chips. But the data recovery still could be possible, and disks are comparatively cheap these days.
Someone mentioned that this is implimented on the logic board. Wouldn't you be able to swap logic boards with a like drive, to access your data. Doesn't help with the locked board, but it keeps your data from being held hostage.
TiVo hacking faq on drive locking
Unlock program for Quantum TiVo hard drive
Supposedly the QUnlock.exe program will permanently unlock the drive, but then again it could be some kind of TiVo "locking" and not the hard drive password locking we're talking about.
If you do forget your password, you aren't entirely screwed. The locking doesn't actually encrypt anything, it just prevents access. Your data is still physically stored "in the clear" on the platters.
So all you need to do is find an exact duplicate of the drive-- same model, same size, same revision, same everything. Make sure the password is null, or at least known. Remove the circuit board from the bad drive, replace it with the board from the good drive, and you're done.
This is enough of a pain in the ass that it's not worth doing to rescue a few documents on a corporate drone's desk machine, or to preserve the Half-Life saved games on your personal PC. But if the "dead" drive stores the novel you've been working on for thirty years, be assured that you can eventually get it back. (Of course if that's the case, this post is moot because you could just restore the file from backup. You do have regular backups, right?)
I work as a tech repairing Compaq and Toshiba laptops. This locking was told to me at a recent training course with Toshiba. I don't know about Compaq (I guess its just that they use the Toshiba HDD's) but if you enable the feature you must sign a document with Toshiba that voids your warranty on the HDD for failure. The lock is actually a chip internal to the HDD itself and is not on the controller. If this chip locks. The drive is throwable, even data recovery centers are unable to recover the data. I am not too sure though if they take the platerns out and put them in another assembly what the story is. Hope that helps
Shite. I was looking at a T40 with the 9k video in it, as I want the SXGA+ display (at least ... again, the Dell 1920 x 1200 WUXGA looks sweet, on paper anyway) and, though I don't game now, I want at least reasonable 3D acceleration for the future. The best I've had in the past is the Mobility Radeon in the Toshiba 1905 I gave my wife, so the 7500 in the other T40s would be a step up, but not a huge one I don't think, and I don't think the T40 w/7500 can be had with anything but the XGA screen. I've not seen any other complaints on the net RE: the issue you mention -- perhaps it's just your machine? OTOH, I'm not done researching, and the T40 just got added to my list the other day. It's more expensive than I want to spend, but the 8600 fully loaded and with said 3yr warranty got pretty damn close, so I figured I'd throw the T40 into the mix and hope SWMBO is cool with the extra expense.
Your comments about Dell are why I wouldn't consider getting one w/o a long warranty. Your last comment (runs Linux surprizingly well) is why I'm still considering them.
Decisions, decisions.
By internal to the harddrive, do you mean inside the sealed platter housing, or on the circuitboard attached to the drive housing?
I've got a Compaq (HP Compaq, bought it last year on Black Friday) laptop.
Model: Presario 915US
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.