Preventing formatting?

I had a hard drive in my laptop (obviously:). I am paranoid, because I am in a location with a lot of individuals some of whom would not have an issue with stealing a computer. In any case, I have taken percautions to prevent the data from being accessed (Boot and BIOS PW, Encrypted HDD), but all of these messures are moot if they break the lock on the case, steal the laptop and format the drive in anouther machine. Anyone aware of anyway to lock a drive from formatting and/or partitioning?

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Comments

dynamik

Put it in concrete.

tiersten

There is no protection mechanism which prevents them from reusing your HD. The ATA security features just prevent somebody accessing the data on the drive. They don't prevent you from reusing the drive. If you don't have the password then you can tell the drive to securely erase the password along with the contents of the drive.

Why are you worried about them reusing the HD anyway? They've just stolen the rest of your laptop.

SephStorm

more as a deterrence. If they know they couldn't use the drive, then they know the computer is worthless to them unless they break the bios passwords.

dynamik

That usually just amounts to resetting a jumper or taking the battery out...

tiersten

SephStorm wrote: »

more as a deterrence. If they know they couldn't use the drive, then they know the computer is worthless to them unless they break the bios passwords.

That means you'd have some sort of sticker or note on the laptop saying that the HD and laptop is worthless to them. Some people won't believe you and steal it anyway and others may just steal it because its there.

Even if the laptop itself is useless because of passwords, somebody somewhere will be willing to pay for the parts out of it. You've already said that you're worried that they'll take the HD out and reuse it.

There are plenty of dubious auctions on eBay where the laptop doesn't boot or is listed as untested. Most BIOS passwords aren't particularly secure either so it may be possible to break in easily.

If you want an unstealable laptop then find something thats 15+ years old and weighs a lot.

tiersten

dynamik wrote: »

That usually just amounts to resetting a jumper or taking the battery out...

Assuming it doesn't have a secret password that lets you in anyway. For certain laptop brands like Toshiba, you can reset the password with a special service dongle. Stinkpads have their password in an EEPROM on the board but its widely documented how to bypass that.