Please identify these HD connectors.

J

Jeroen1000

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2010
Messages
266
Hey everyone,

Could someone take a look a look here http://azerty.nl/0-855-198616/seagate-momentus-7200-4-st9500.html.

If you click on one of the pictures you can use the zoom tool to see the drive's power and data connectors. I've got a regular 3"5 hard drive sitting right next to me and it looks very different. I want to use a 2"5 inch drive in my Norco case but those connectors do not look compatible with the cables I have...

And using google, I've found that SATA laptop drives can be connected to a desktop system. Still makes me wonder why those connectors look so unfamiliar.
 
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I think you get confused by the "holes" in the plastic, but the general form of the connectors is standard SATA for sure.
 
I almost had to be (according to what I found about laptop hard drives on google) but I just don't see it in the picture. But thanks for confirming. I'll have one on its way soon:D
BTW, thanks for digging up those pictures drescherjm.

@ above. Yep, the relative size looks correct, but the holes really threw me off.
 
I have the 250GB version of that drive. It's definitely a regular SATA connector as I currently having it running in a desktop machine with normal SATA cables.
 
Excellent, so putting a normal SATA power cable on it won't fry it either (I've found 2"5 drives use the 5V line vs the 12v line for 3"5 drives).

Did you get one with encryption? Looks like a good way to protect data at rest.
 
I don't think mine has encryption, or at least I've never tried to enable it.
 
Built in encryption on disk is special - Need to use with a board / system that supports the standard, and there is no easy way to check to see if its encrypted securely. Can cause headaches should you need to have disk recovery performed in the future so good backups are a must.
 
no easy wasy? I'd just connect it to a system that cannot supply the password. Then I'd fire up Winhex and take a look whether it finds any files/file system.

My disk is on its way as we speak. I just need to get my hands on software in order to manage it.
 
Then I'd fire up Winhex and take a look whether it finds any files/file system.
Click to expand...

The filesystem (partition table ...) would be all encrypted so you would only find unreadable garbage.
 
That's the point. That is about the only way you can check and I'd be pretty worried if it is not unreadable garbage. Now that I think about it, Triage might have meant that there is no easy wat to check whether encryption is implemented correctly by the drive vendor.
 
The beautiful thing about encryption behind the controller is you can't access the raw disk to check it. I haven't heard of studies regarding swapping the board as my understanding it is a firmware lock + the encrypted data. With the board swapped you should be able to access the disk and run a similar attack to this for pkzip:
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/wwwb/cgi-bin/tr-info.cgi?1994/CS/CS0842

If the drive uses a weak implementation, and you know the OS running on the system there is a lot of known information to use, including probable location.

I didn't say built in encryption is bad, just not disclosed to my liking.

Edit:
Then again my post could just be more fud on the fire, as I haven't played with it myself.
 
How do these hardware encryption schemes work from a user perspective? Do you have to enter a password at every boot? Is there an OS component or application that needs to be installed?

My work laptop has Checkpoint PointSec installed, which is software FDE. It's quite slow, but if you lose the laptop there's not much anyone can do unless they have your password (I don't think AES256 has been broken in any meaningful way yet). Also, across an organization that has thousands of laptops, it's much easier to manage one common software package than a myriad of different hardware encryption schemes.
 
It works either with a BIOS supporting HDD password (caution! HDD password is NOT the same as the regular BIOS password which can be cleared by a simple CMOS reset). There are very very few desktop motherboards that support HDD password. It's more of a notebook thing. I do believe Intel have a few.

More "advanced" drives have a special (unencrypted obviously) reserved area where a mini-linux handles the authentication (similar to Truecrypt). This area is called the PBA area (pre-boot authentication area).
So yes, with HDD password you do need to input your password. The mini-linux variant allows remote input and remote erase and can support smart-card, fingerprint readers, ...

edit: oh yes, there are software packages to manage these drives centrally for corporate uses, Winmagic is a popular one.
 
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Triage, I wish I paid more attention or had a better memory but some FIPS-140 approved drives incorperate countermeasures against tampering. They go as far that when you connect the disk to another computer, it erases itself (destroys the encryption key). A cool one is that when a disk has not been booted within a certain amount of time, it will erase the key when power is applied next.

Moreover, I do not believe board swapping to work so easily: some security parameters are stored on the DISK and not in the firmware... The board swapping is a popular way to circumvent ata-password though;) (ATA password being a firmware lock if I remember correctly).
 
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