Dell Latitude D620 data wipe
Hello again, I have been given another laptop for clearance of personal data, by the same lady as the Apple MB Pro. This one is a Dell Latitude D620 loaded with Win XP Pro. The BIOS does not have any of the Passwords set so I was able to run the machine up and see what needed clearing. After removing downloads, documents, pictures and videos there was little left to worry about.
Then I thought I would just see if the machine was still powerful enough to run anything. I usually find that machines as old as this one, 10 years plus, have been dragged down to a snails pace by software bloat. This one is surprisingly usable when browsing with FF loaded with many addons. Not bad for a 32 bit, 2 core cpu with 2GB Ram. It could be a bit quicker though........
So, I used a Linux Live USB to install Mnt 18.3 onto the original HDD and installed FF and the same addons. On testing in a non scientific way (browsing my favourite websites) it did feel a bit quicker than Win XP with FF. Then I wondered if changing the HDD to a SSD would give any more speed. That was when the difficulties arose. The BIOS detects the HDD identity and wont allow access to a drive that does not match the original device unless an HDD password is entered. I can boot up from the Live USB but the SSD is not detected and the Linux installation fails due to insufficient space (it only sees the 2GB USB stick with the live code).
I can't get my mind around what this bit of security is for. If I put the HDD into a caddy I can read all of it on my Mint desktop machine. So clearly the drive is not secure in itself. As a Live USB has allowed me to over write the HDD this again has not protected the data on the drive. The only thing protected by this odd security feature is the machine itself, it stops you from swapping the HDD or substituting an SSD without going back to DELL and probably paying for an unlock code???? Even then the machine runs up on a USB stick and will browse the web so even the machine is not fully protected.
I wonder if I clone the HDD onto an SSD the HDD identity will be carried across?
Fun and games.....
Rans6..........