Hard Disk Passwords & Disk Cloning

[dsvochak]

Being generally paranoid about such things, every time I have cloned a disk I've removed the hard disk password before cloning. Has anyone cloned a password protected disk? And if you have, what happens? Is the password cloned to the new disk?

Thanks.

[Nolonemo]

I'm curious to hear about this. I thought that the password involved the drive's on-board controller, and in that case, wouldn't the clone be passoword-free? Or does the controller work in tandem with something written to the disk?

[Ground Loop]

The password "unlocks" the disk, but the contents are there all the same.
It doesn't actually encrypt anything.. the same data is stored the same way.

Without the password, the controller on the IDE drive is supposed to refuse access to the data.

Once you've unlocked it from the BIOS password entry, the drive is fully functional and works just like any other IDE drive. This is completely transparent to everything after the BIOS. The password isn't cloned with the data on the drive. For the same reason, if you completely reformat your drive, it is STILL password-locked at boot-up.

The BIOS just has hooks to collect the password entry from the user and feed it to the ATA drive to unlock it. With the fingerprint reader, it probably stores the (plaintext) password and releases it to the drive when it sees the right fingerprint.