strange question but...

Does the Riocar understand laptop disk locking as i have a thinkpad disk which is locked and i don't know the password for, If i put this in the rio will it cause problems or will it ignore the lock.

I am not interested in keeping the data only using the disk.

Any idea's as i don't want to break me rio.

C.

I've never heard of "disk locking" except for proprietary software-based encryption schemes. In those schemes, the lock is not at the hardware level, it's at the disk device driver level, which is at a fairly high level in the software. The purpose isn't to lock the disk hardware per se, it's mainly intended to encrypt the data stored on the disk drive.

Perhaps there's some kind of low-level spec for locking disks that I haven't heard about, so I'm willing to be corrected on this, but...

When you put the disks into the empeg and follow these instructions, you will be completely re-partitioning the drives from scratch. I'm guessing that any sort of software-based "lock" data will be casually erased by this procedure.

So I think if you just follow those instructions you will be fine. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Yeah there is an under used IDE feature which allows you to password protect a drive essentially at the hardware level.

That's what the XBOX uses to encrypt it's harddrives.

From memory when I looked at the IDE spec it was possible to remove the password at the expense of the data on it....

From the ATA spec.

"If the User password sent to the device with the SECURITY UNLOCK command does not match the user
password previously set with the SECURITY SET PASSWORD command, the device shall not allow the
user to access data.
If the Security Level was set to High during the last SECURITY SET PASSWORD command, the device shall
unlock if the Master password is received.
If the Security Level was set to Maximum during the last SECURITY SET PASSWORD command, the device
shall not unlock if the Master password is received. The SECURITY ERASE UNIT command shall erase all
user data and unlock the device if the Master password matches the last Master password previously set
with the SECURITY SET PASSWORD command."

So as long as the drive is only set to high security you can probably send an erase command to it (master password probably isn't set). If it has been set to maximum security you're possibly stuffed. A low level format might get you out of trouble.

You need a program that can send any harddrive command. Mark Lord might be able to help - I'm unaware of a program, linux or Windows that will let you control a drive at this low level.

If it is actually locked then it won't work. I believe it just appears as a 8MBish HD when it's locked like the old Tivo drives used to be.

I've not tried it personally but ATA Tools can apparently send the commands.

- Trevor

Well, one learns something new every day. I stand corrected.