IBM Lappy PassWord's?

[YahoKa]

Ok, i'm looking at buying this used IBM laptop, it's a good deal except there is one problem that conecerns me. I am told that the hard drives are "passworded" and can only be used if you have the password. What does this mean? I am slightly concerned.

[Shadowfire]

Never heard about such a thing... maybe they meant BIOS password?

[Paladyr]

If there is still a password on it and the guy selling it doesn't know it, then the laptop was stolen most likely.

[fdeaton]

I would be very leery, but there are other reasons the seller would not know passwords. Do you have any other knowledge of the origins of this computer?

[SkyDog]

IBM ThinkPads have three different hardware passwords: power-on, supervisor, and hard drive. IBM was serious with password security on the supervisor and hard drive passwords, and these passwords are stored in non-volatile EEPROMs, meaning that there's no simple jumper or battery to momentarily replace. If a password is set, it's going to stay set unless you've got a soldering iron and a spare EEPROM.

If the hard drive password is set, then the hard drive in that laptop might as well be a paperweight. You would need to buy another hard drive. I would also wonder if any of the other two passwords on that system are set. One would keep you out of BIOS settings, and the other keeps the system from booting. I wouldn't wager that the seller knows that they're not set.

I used to do field repairs for IBM systems. Standard IBM procedure to get into a locked ThinkPad is to replace the locked part -- either the hard drive or system board (and you can guess that's not cheap)!

There are ways to get in, but it's really involved... HERE is a page with more information.

[ewitte]

Originally posted by SkyDog
There are ways to get in, but it's really involved... HERE is a page with more information. [/B]

Would you be able to use a laptop-pc hard drive adapter so you could low level format that sucker on a PC?

Eric

[SkyDog]

Originally posted by ewitte
Would you be able to use a laptop-pc hard drive adapter so you could low level format that sucker on a PC?

I've never tried it, but I doubt it. There's an EEPROM on the hard drive itself that stores password info for the disk password. If the password isn't validated, the hard drive doesn't allow access. Even if you were able to format the drive somehow, when you put it back in the laptop, you still wouldn't have access to it since the format wouldn't kill the data in the EEPROM chip.

[ewitte]

Originally posted by SkyDog


I've never tried it, but I doubt it. There's an EEPROM on the hard drive itself that stores password info for the disk password. If the password isn't validated, the hard drive doesn't allow access. Even if you were able to format the drive somehow, when you put it back in the laptop, you still wouldn't have access to it since the format wouldn't kill the data in the EEPROM chip.

Might as well replace the drive unless the laptop is a POS. You can get a 20GB for under $100 or a 40GB for around $150.

Eric