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DriveLock on Compaq/HP Laptops?

Posted by Cliff on from the harddrives-wedded-to-motherboards dept.

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?

9 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't this what the XBOX does? by balamw · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like the same ATA standard passwords that the XBOX uses. See for example http://www.siliconice.net/XBOX/Guides/hdd_password .shtml

    Balam
  2. ATA Spec by MountainLogic · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:ATA Spec by Quikah · · Score: 4, Informative

      According ot HP/Compaq it is based on ATA-3 specifications. There is a whitepaper discussing it here.

      --
      Q.
    2. Re:ATA Spec by Isomer · · Score: 4, Informative

      The "permanently" is until the next power cycle. There are 5 attempts before you have to completely power cycle the drive, therefore slowing down brute force attacks on the password.

      You can reset the password but you lose all the data currently on the drive, look up SMART, I believe smartmontools under linux can tinker with these settings.

  3. Re:If it were just a bios password by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Is it maybe similar to the xbox harddisk locking?
    For xbox there are tools to disable it, maybe some will follow for this harddisks.
    I also guess the disk is not fully encrypted, so its probably not really secure. If compaq/hp really think that is a clever option, then it should be an option to unlock it in the bios (oc with the correct password), everything else is just stupid and not very customer friendly.
    but good to know, i will never buy a laptop with this kind of clever security.

  4. Re:Use the fdisk, Luke! by DA-MAN · · Score: 3, Informative

    The machines tend to fail to recognize the hard disk when the password is not entered. When you do boot up off a dos floppy to attempt to fdisk, it doesn't find any hard disks (assuming it's the only disk in the machine).

    --
    Can I get an eye poke?
    Dog House Forum
  5. Possible solution? by jgoemat · · Score: 2, Informative
    I don't know if this will work in a general for hard drive locking or if the locking described is TiVo-specific, but here are some links...

    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.

  6. The hard drive lock.. by Blackheim · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  7. Re:If it were just a bios password by kableh · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is the EXACT same technology. Most laptop drives these days support this feature, from what I understand.

    Hmm... I wonder if swapping the controller board on the drive would workaround this "security" feature?