Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[tucana]

Hi,

I'm using software disk encryption with cryptsetup and dm-crypt on Linux distrubution, but I'm really interested in the FDE hard drives produced by Seagate like the Momentus 7200 FDE Laptop 500GB 2,5'' (with or without FIPS 140-2) and I have some questions about them:

1) there is some software to manage them on Linux? If not, the only way is to set the password through the BIOS? And what about formatting them on Linux?

2) it is possible to use those drives in an external USB/e-SATA box as a bootable hard drive? If so, how I can set and provide the password at boot time?

3) it is possible to have an FDE hard drive with the G-Force protection?

Thanks in advance for any reply

[fzabkar]

I don't have the answers, but I'm thinking that, if your FDE drive were to be bootable, then you would need the BIOS to be FDE aware so that it could issue the password challenge. If such a challenge were to come from Linux, then there would need to be an unencrypted bootstrap section on the drive, with the remainder of the user space being encrypted. But, AIUI, FDE is Full Disk Encryption. Therefore, any Linux bootstrap code would need to be on another storage medium.

[Grim0x]

Hello Tucana - welcome.

If you find a software to manage them - do let me know

I'm looking for one for my freeagent.

A linux alternative to Seagate manager is widely anticipated - there has yet to be one i'm afraid though.

You could use dm-crypt on these drive as well - or another such utility, but for drive with hardware encryption - seagate doesn't have such software for linux as yet.

You could use use one of these drive in an enclosure to boot to an os (so long as you bios supports it). But the only medium of enforcing a PW I see is to have the actual os (running from the drive) do it.

Not sure about question no.3 ^_^

[mattpie]

Note that this is NOT based on direct experience, just what I understand from reading.

1. For the second part, after you unlock the drive using the BIOS-based password prompt, it should show up just like any other drive.  You'd format the same as before (fdisk, lvm, etc.).

2. USB is the big question for me.  I can't find any reference of someone using this drive via a USB enclosure with a password created.  eSATA *should* work, since eSATA is just piping SATA commands thru.  I think it's safe to say hot-plugging an external drive (when the system is already up) will NOT work, unless the Seagate software (currently only for Windows) deals with this.

So, someone out there want to pull their drive out and put in on a USB adapter and see if the BIOS prompts for the password?   Pretty please?