break password hdd for latop acer
- Thread starter darksoulfire008
- Start date
tlarkin
VIP Member
Yes that is what I was talking about to begin with, but you confused me with your technical prowess, or perhaps I was just unfamiliar with the exact terminology. However, I have used HP's technology called "secure drive" on our HP servers that had HIPPA sensitive information on them. Which was all controlled via the BIOS like I originally stated.
It makes sense to add the firmware level password to deny access to the whole device. I know that there is a recovery tool also in case of a system failure and that drive no longer wants to interface with anything.
Anyway, if that is the case no normal user just goes in and does that unless they want to protect their data.
I'm not sure we're on the same page now. Your first comment was about the bios being password protected, and by resetting the cmos, you would gain access. The ATA password has nothing to do with the bios, except that you need a way to send the password to the harddrive, and this is what the bios provides.
tlarkin
VIP Member
No we are on the same page I said it either had to go through the BIOS or the boot sector, and I got confused when you said that it didn't. I think we were talking about the same thing just differently, but seriously, stop confusing me!
I'm not trying to confuse you with my technical prowess, but you did ask about it. I replied to what you said here: "it is controlled by the BIOS, not the hard disk"
And it is not controlled by the bios. Bios just puts up a prompt, nothing else. If you take out the drive, and install it as a slave on a running system, you could also send the password from within that OS.
And it is not controlled by the bios. Bios just puts up a prompt, nothing else. If you take out the drive, and install it as a slave on a running system, you could also send the password from within that OS.
tlarkin
VIP Member
No I just misunderstood what you were saying. It may be stored on the drive and that is fine, and I knew that was possible, however the BIOS still controls the passwords. You set it via a control panel in the BIOS. Sometimes they will even have a hardware lock on them and you can turn a security key on the drive and lock it. HP also has that as well in their enterprise servers.
I was just unfamiliar with the exact underlying technology embedded into ATA itself.
"however the BIOS still controls the passwords" but it doesn't, that is the whole point. The only thing controlling the ata password is the hard drive. If the bios controlled the password, you could replace/reset the bios and gain access.
We might be on the same exact page, I just don't like that phrase very much.
We might be on the same exact page, I just don't like that phrase very much.
tlarkin
VIP Member
It is just stored on the hard drive itself, but it is not like you can boot off some utility and set the password, you do it through the bios. Resetting the BIOS will not reset the password since it is stored on the drive itself, in the drives firmware.
What exactly that password does is not that clear either. It obviously doesn't encrypt the drive, but I guess it just doesn't make it bootable?
The document you linked vaguely says does not allow others to access user data, what exactly does that mean?
To access data, you need to send commands to the drive's firmware, commands like READ and WRITE. The drive will just ignore all these commands when it is locked (no access to user data). To unlock the drive, you send it an UNLOCK command together with the password. If the password is correct, the drive will then begin to accept other commands.
tlarkin
VIP Member
Yeah I saw that chart, the locked, unlocked and frozen. I saw that locked denied all read and write requests. I am curious now to actually how secure that really is.
Oh well.
darksoulfire008
New Member
thankful to everybody , i did all what everybody saw but i can't access windows
i questioned many people ,they talked what i questioned is pass HDD,it set password by hiren boot by software HDAT 2, who know aout it,please help me
i questioned many people ,they talked what i questioned is pass HDD,it set password by hiren boot by software HDAT 2, who know aout it,please help me
tlarkin
VIP Member
So you are booting off of this?
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
and it is asking for a password? Well what is the default password of that boot disk?
It looks like it is a DOS disk so it shouldn't require any authentication. I just don't think we are understanding what you are trying to ask.
Why are you using that boot disk? What are you trying to accomplish with it? Are you trying to crack a password with it?