How do I enable a self-encrypting drive (SED) on Windows 7?

[soccer_dan]

1. Correct. BIOS will manage access to SED once you enable DriveLock - BIOS Setup password required before this can be done to avoid potential changes by unauthorized users

2. NO

3.Possibly, but no guarantees all the same

4. WinMagic is one of HP's preferred drive encryprion partners as they can not only manage SED of OPAL 1 and 2 versions but the same console can provide s/w encryption for non-SED drives and manage all as common profiles

5. SecureBoot is an UEFI component developed by Microsoft for Windows 8 (and 8.1) to prevent unauthorized code to be loaded (run) by the BIOS. It helps prevent rootkits and such things

6. Although Windows 7 has some UEFI capability and GPT partitioning support, it is best to have the BIOS in Legacy mode. 

[derektom]

Thank you very much, soccer_dan. That's all excellent info.

Best,

Derek

[derektom]

Follow-up notes:

1. When I first tried to set the DriveLock password, I got an alert that stated, "Drivelock is temporarily not available for this drive. Please power the system off and enter Computer Setup again to access the Drivelock features," which was a bit worrying (*see photo link below for reference).
2. After I got the above note, I powered the machine off, entered (BIOS) Setup, and instead of going into DriveLock, I first clicked on "Setup BIOS Administrator Password" to set up that password. I was then able to proceed with the DriveLock setup but I don't know if that step was what actually fixed the "DriveLock temporarily not available" issue.
3. The DriveLock setup involves setting up USER and MASTER passwords. The MASTER password is able to reset the USER password.

Photos of screens in the links below for reference.

Hope this is helpful for others.

[GMihai]

Thanks for the response,

Can you, please, clarify the following quote from HP's whitepaper?

"DriveLock is a part of the ATA standard, and restricts access to the SED unless the correct password is entered during POST

to unlock the drive. Using ATA Drive Lock doesn’t require any additional software. In addition, when using ATA Drive Lock, an

AK is not created on the SED. This means that the DEK is not encrypted, and is considered less secure. If possible, the drive

should be properly provisioned as described in the next section."

Why doesn't DriveLock generate an AK to encrypt the DEK and what does "less secure" really mean?

Thank you in advance

[soccer_dan]

On non-self encrypting (SED) drives, DriveLock is the ability to put a password on the controller of the drive. This password is not encrypted. The BIOS can ask for the password from the user/admin during setup, or (at least) in our products, can generate its own password and place it on the drive. Then, every time the drive powers on by command from the motherboard, it will first ask for this DriveLock password. If the BIOS does not offer it, the drive will not power up.

On SEDs, the drive encrypts the data in and out by using keys generated in the drive controller that never, ever, are seen outside the drive. By default, Windows will write to the drive, which encrypts and stores the data. On a read, the drive toes the opposite, decrypting the needed data and returning that to Windows. When DriveLock is enabled on a SED, it provides a password to the drive to secure access to the data. If the BIOS provides this password at power on the drive powers on and data is encrypted and decrypted normally. If the BIOS does not (e.g. drive was moved to another computer), the drive powers on but all data is inaccessible and only a reformat will get back the drive to operating condition

At a high level...

[Dennis_Handly]

>only a reformat will get back the drive to operating condition

Are you sure about that?  Once a drive is locked, you can't do any I/O operations on it.

You would need to do a Revert, which also crypto erases the drive.

[Icthus_Tech]

You are correct about a revert being necessary and it will crypto erase the drive.  Some SED vendors make a utility to perform this operation and others do not.  For instance, Samsung makes a utility, but they keep it secret and you have to dig a lot to find it.  Crucial does not make one, but will replace the drive under warranty, although they techically say they don't need to do it (speaking from experience).  However, they also will direct you to a program in beta testing that should perform a revert on any OPAL 2 SED.  The program is called MSED and can be found at:

http://www.r0m30.com/msed

Again, this is in beta testing.  I ran it successfully once to revert an SED and it failed to revert a second drive.  It had to be replaced under warranty.

Soccer_Dan, I'd appreciate it if you could answer a few questions regarding the DriveLock.

Does it work on all SEDs, both Opal 1 and Opal 2 compliant?  From some things I've been reading, it seems like at least some DriveLock versions will only operate on Opal 1 compliant drives.  If so, is there a document telling which PCs/Laptops support which Opal version?

You said DriveLock can also lock down standard drives but placing the unencrypted password in the controller of the drive.  Will this drive be accessible if the drive is moved to another PC, since it will just be accessed as a data drive and it is unencrypted?  It seems as long as the drive is in the original PC, DriveLock will keep it secure.

Does DriveLock work with all standard (non-SED) drives?  Thanks for your help.

[soccer_dan]

DriveLock will work with whatever version of SED type drive supported by HP with that platform. If a platform supported OPAL 1 only (say a model from a couple of years back, then no OPAL 2 drives would be supported on that platform BIOS' DriveLock. Hope this makes sense. Basically, whatever drive type is supported by HP on a notebook, it is supported by that model's DriveLock.

The original DriveLock technology developed by Compaq and other vendors (i think Intel, maybe) was designed to lock down a drive and provide some at rest security. The BIOS adds a pwd to the controller of the drive (if the drive supported Drivelock in the f/w, and then the drive would ask for the password every time it powered on. If you move the drive to another system, the BIOS in that system would not know the Drivelock password and the drive will then not power on. It becomes a brick (at least for most folks)

HP started using DriveLock as a means to also creating the encrypted protection path for SEDs, so that after an SED turns on, the contents are protected until the BIOS provides the encryption 'stuff' which allows the drive to continue working as a normal drive - of course, all data is encrypted and decrypted automatically on access

Hope this helps

[Icthus_Tech]

Thanks for the information.  So we can fairly safely say that since the OPAL 2 standard was released in February of 2012, all computers released prior to that and most likely also in 2012 only have DriveLock that supports OPAL 1 drives.  Other than that, it is really hard to find information on what OPAL standard is supported.

So, DriveLock works only on drives that support it.  Would that have anything to do with the DriveTrust standard that Seagate came out with?

I agree with you about Wave's SED management software solutions being the best.  As long as you are working with a lot of computers (you have to purchase a minimum of 20 licenses), it is great.  They also offer cloud management for a yearly fee that is outstanding.

If someone wants to manage an OPAL 1 laptop/PC that they have installed a more recent OPAL 2 drive on, they can also use other software.  I have installed Softex SecureDrive for a lot of my customers for a one-time cost and they offer free lifetime support.

If anyone is interested, the MSED program I mentioned earlier will now manage the drive passwords and locking and will install a PreBoot Environment.  It is free, but it is in Beta testing and does *NOT* have a nice installer or user interface.  This is certainly for the DIY crowd of computer geeks.

I also list other management software at my website, selfencryptingdrives.info.

[masl_wm]

Hey,

I also have problems using SEDs on our HP 4540s notebooks. We have several 4540s and just updated the BIOS to the latest version this week. Then we changed from the normal HDD to Crucial M500 SSDs. On most of the 4540s this worked like a charm, we were able to set the drivelock password and on boot we are prompted to enter it. But on some devices we cant set a password as it is telling us after a click on drivelock password "HDD is HW encrypted". And thats it, no further actions possible and no password on boot.

We are using Windos 7 prof x64, no BitLocker.