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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?

4 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.