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?

Comments

If it were just a bios password

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It is,

[His name cannot be s]

It 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..

Can't be disabled?

[gaj]

According to the text of the third link (I know, I know, WTF am I doing reading the links? And I'm not even new here), it appears that DriveLock must be enabled.

1. When the DriveLock function is enabled and the User Password is forgotten, the device can be unlocked using the Master Password. [first footnote, first page, emphasis mine]

If anyone has evidence that HPaq sells laptops with DriveLock permanently enabled, I'd love to hear about it, as I'm shopping for a new machine. (OT, but currently my short list is down to the Dell Inspiron 8600 or the IBM ThinkPad T40, but I'm considering HPaq as a budget alternative, as both of the above are a bit more than I really want to spend)

ATA standard

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Same Issue

[DA-MAN]

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.

These guys say they can help

[dhwebb]

Nortek claims that they can do it. They have 3 options for recovery: unlock - $85, unlock & certify - $145, and unlock, retrieve and restore data, and certify - $295.

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.

Don't throw the drive out

[AuraSeer]

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?)