Why on HP EliteBook 840 G5 can set DriveLock and on HP EliteBook 850 G5 can't set DriveLock

[Danipe]

Hello I have unabled to set DriveLock on my HP Elitebook 850 G5 - when i choose this option in Bios - Hard Drive Utilities - DriveLock/Automatic DriveLock - i Have not seen any disk and I unable to set Drivelock.

But on HP EliteBook 840 G5 I can set the DriveLock - I see the disk under option DriveLock/Automatic DriveLock and i can setup password.

Why on 850 G5 I unable set DriveLock ? 

Version Biose is the same on the booth NBs

01.08.01 Rev.A

[IT_WinSec]

Hello @Danipe 

Thank you for posting in the HP Support Community.

Both PC models support HP Drive Lock.

This is a strong security feature in business class devices which provides protection against unauthorized data access. This ensures the integrity of the data. A drive protected with a DriveLock password stays protected even if the drive is removed from one system and inserted into another.

The reasons you do not see a drive on one of the machine is that either the drive is missing, the drive is corrupted or not supported. NOTE that HP Drive Lock supports only SATA drives. Newer models such as NVMe are not supported

If one of the PCs has newer drive type, it will not appear under DriveLock supported drives

More info about the types of HDD/SDD drives and their connections to the PC motherboard:

>> https://blog.silicon-power.com/index.php/guides/ssd-interface-types/

>> Easy Guide to SSDs: SATA, mSATA, M.2 and U.2

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes

[Danipe]

Hello IT_WinSec

both NB models haven't SATA interface.

In EB 840 G5 is installed NVMe disk - Samsung MZVLB512HAJQ-000H1 and in EB 850 G5 is installed NVMe disk WDC PC SN720 SDAQNTW-512G-1006.

Is it strange, why on 840 i can setup DriveLock and on 850 I cannot setup.

[IT_WinSec]

Hello,

That is strange to see. As far as I know DriveLock is developed for the SATA standard. I also could not enable it on one non-SATA disk before on Elitebook I used before.

• This will be investigated further and me or somebody else will post back - it might take a while.

[soccer_dan]

The Drivelock technique of adding a pwd to a drive controller for some measure of security when accessing the drive was developed using the IDE/ATA and later SATA standard protocol. Drivelock ONLY works with SATA drives... NVME controller drives DO NOT support the ATA/SATA protocol, by design, as the technology was developed to improve data access speeds on flash-based storage devices (e.g. SSD's) that do not have spinning platters and moving heads. Data on SSDs are nearly instantaneously accessed and the NVME control command set was deleloped uniquely for that

There is newly developed support for something similar to Drivelock on NVME drives, called "Pyrite" which is similar but different than SATA-based Drivelock passwords... HP BIOS since about last year have supported Pyrite technology... the issue is that most current NVME SSDs do not currently support Pyrite protection

That is why Drivelock will not see a NVME drive in the list to manage

[Danipe]

Yes I know that DriveLock technology is a developed for Sata, but it was strange for me why I can set DriveLock on some SSD disk and other no.

In this case label DriveLock in Bios is a little bit misleading ....

[soccer_dan]

not strange at all... if there is a SATA m.2 or 2.5" drive in the system, Drivelock will see the drive and can password protect it... if the drive is an NVME drive, Drivelock will not see it as supporting Drivelock and therefore will not show it on its list

[Danipe]

AS I Wrote higher in both notebooks are installed NVMe disks. Not any m.2 SATA

840 G5 Samsung MZVLB512HAJQ-000H1 - See in DriveLock

850 G5 WDC PC SN720 SDAQNTW-512G-1006 - Dont see in DriveLock