FWB Hard Disk Toolkit encryption?

#1 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - 14:10 68kMLA

This week I discovered that FWB HDTK for Mac OS 9 offers the possibility to secure the entire HD. Has anyone of you further informations how it encrypts it? Would be interresting if it is a simple password or a real encryption (whith what kind of algorythm?). I was not able to find further informations, ... but would be interrested if I can trust the FWB encryption.

I like to use it instead of PGP discs, as they are limited to 2 GB each, ... any interresting hints?

#2 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - 14:23 68kMLA

I know on ATA laptop drives you can encrypt them using the drive firmware with a password and there is no easy way to bypass that is the password is lost, desktop drives might be the same way.

#3 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - 14:39 68kMLA

yea newer desktop drives offer the same "solution", course soon as your computer craps with the drive locked your stuffed, so I dont recommend it (I had a nice collection of HA HA drives in this situation for a while)

software based solutions which I would imagine HDT is using is probably wiser (just in case you spill a cup of coffee while the computer is just starting to post)

sorry I don't have any relevant information to share about the topic though

#4 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - 15:02 68kMLA

You can take that locked drive to another machine and unlock it I think (it uses the HD firmware not the computer firmware). Without the password the drive is a brick.

#5 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - 15:24 68kMLA

many of the ones I had, the password was scrambled by bios, so unless you had an identical bios it was a brick even with the password

other nightmares include a virus and I have even heard a few "ahole" kids doing it as a joke while mashing random keys xx(