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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?
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.
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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.
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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.
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?
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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.
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
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?