Locking hard drive
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I have an external hard drive and want to protect it beyond encryption.
Is there any way to lock the hard disk formatting in case of theft or other accident?
What do you mean? Do you mean you want to make it so someone couldn't format the data (i.e. erase the contents of your drive)? I'm not sure if there is a way to do that.
Yes, I meant it.
An added bonus for linux is the chattr command, that prevents (in linux only)
a file deletion/change, but that's not what you are asking for.
I've thought of that myself (preventing drive formatting and content
deletion) and i'd really love if it was possible... but i guess that the best
way is to have it encrypted and make a backup onto another drive and keep it
somewhere safe.
I found this:
"It is not a very well known fact, but all hard disks have a very strong
hardware password capability build in. This password is usually stored both
in a chip on the HD controller (the printed circuit board on the hard disk)
and on the hard disk itself in a special hidden sector.
Setting this password will make the hard disk completely unusable to anyone
that doesn’t know it. And not only on your computer, but on any computer.
[...]
The only way of retrieving any files from a password protected hard disk
without knowing the password is to send it to a data recovery company for
unlocking, but not all data recovery companies could or would unlock a
password protected HD."
An added bonus for linux is the chattr command, that prevents (in linux only) a file deletion/change, but that's not what you are asking for.
I've thought of that myself (preventing drive formatting and content deletion) and i'd really love if it was possible... but i guess that the best way is to have it encrypted and make a backup onto another drive and keep it somewhere safe.
I think i have read somewhere that it is possible to prevent CD and DVD copies by intentionally writing bad sectors at the start of the CD/DVD... and once i accidentally made a USB pen drive read-only by removing it while downloading a file to it from the web, when i was young and innocent and still used wind0us @!#$... [self-censored]. I could read what was there but could not change/delete or format the pen (believe me, i tried), although i didn't try to format it with linux at that time.
I guess that even if there was some way of preventing formatting or cross-platform content deletion in a Hard drive, that would make it permanently read-only.
Unless that is really what you are looking for...
I found this:
"It is not a very well known fact, but all hard disks have a very strong hardware password capability build in. This password is usually stored both in a chip on the HD controller (the printed circuit board on the hard disk) and on the hard disk itself in a special hidden sector.
Setting this password will make the hard disk completely unusable to anyone that doesn’t know it. And not only on your computer, but on any computer.
[...]
The only way of retrieving any files from a password protected hard disk without knowing the password is to send it to a data recovery company for unlocking, but not all data recovery companies could or would unlock a password protected HD."
http://www.laptoptips.ca/security/hard-disk-password/
I use password on my HDs, but I never tried to unlock them from another computer.
It's an ATA feature; I don't know if USB HDDs are ATA...
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