Harddisks in laptops are most often set with a password to protect the 
data on them should the system be stolen. If you only have a cmos 
password in the bios and someone steals the system to gain business data 
and if they can simply take the disk out and put it into another system 
to read it - things are very secure - the Bios password (which in many 
cases used to be able to be reset by a strap on the motherboard anyway 
(no longer so in recent laptops)) doesn't protect data on the harddisk.

Data on the harddisk can be further secured by encrypting it.

Cheers/2

Ed.

rallee2{at}comcast.net wrote:

>Hello
>  Doesn't low level formatting assume a scsi drive?  Most IDE drives
are no longer user formattable AFAIK.  Also, why would anyone password
protect a hard drive?  Here I am assuming they mean in firmware which also
should be unaffected by a low level format.  I can't help but wonder if the
person assuming the hard drive is password protected actually means his
bios is password protected since I can imagine little value in password
protercting the firmware.  Also, it seems common for people to refer to
their encased system as "the cpu" or "the hard drive"
as a generic term since they don't really understand the concept of a
motherboard or the entire system as a whole.
>Jimmy
>
>
>  
>
>>inkleput{at}isp.com wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I didn't know until today there was such a thing as a hard drive
>>>password.  But there is a caddy on eBay that has an HD the seller
>>>believes to be locked up on a password.  He's just throwing in the HD
>>>under those conditions.
>>>
>>>I found an article on the net which says you can apply a voltage to some
>>>BIOS pins to remove the password.  Is anybody familiar with this
>>>procedure?
>>>
>>>Jim L, via eCS 1.14 version of OS/2
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Just low level format the drive.
>>
>>The HD password is data like any other on the drive.
>>
>>A normal format wont clear it but a low level format will.
>>
>>Cheers/2
>>
>>Ed.
>>
>>
>> 
>>Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>
>
>  
>



 
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