Thinkpads Forum

I have set a harddisk password on the internal SSD of my T410s.

Now I'd like to boot from an external harddrive (or CDROM) *without* unlocking the internal harddisk. The reason is I don't want any malware to access my main system.

Problem is, I do not find any way around entering the harddisk password. The BIOS just locks up if I enter the password three times wrong, and the ESC key does not work either.

This was no problem on a Dell Latitude. How can I solve the problem on my ThinkPad?

Well, I would have thought that you could disable the internal hard drive from the BIOS' boot setup and therefore not be prompted for the HD password, but that doesn't seem to work on my T23. It's possible that this was changed on later systems so it could be worth a try. Have you also tried accessing the boot menu (via the F12 key at power up) and directly selecting the external hard drive or CDROM?

I can neither enter the BIOS (F1) nor go to the boot device selection (F12) without entering the drive password.

The pure presence of a password protected drive attached and recognised in BIOS will provoke the BIOS to request the password before proceeding to boot from any other attached medium. That's the whole point of the password.

If you remove the drive, it wont ask for the password.

I had a Thinkpad T42 (2373-K5H), previously did use BIOS to set HDD password.

After a while I did not like this HDD password, went back into BIOS to get rid of the HDD password.
If I remember correctly, it disable HDD password after BIOS ask for you to enter correct HDD password again.
Someone pls correct me if I'm wrong on this latter point, but I did succeed in disabling HDD password.

@andyP Drive passwords are *not* meant as a prevention to boot at all by unauthed users (that's what the other BIOS password is good for). Drive passwords are meant to prevent accessing one specific drive (the one with the password) by unauthed users. Can you tell me how to remove the internal drive in software (BIOS), without having to physically open the notebook?

@w0qj Note that this thread is *not* about how to remove the drive password. Obviously it would allow me to boot without having to enter the password again; however it also allows malware to infect the drive, which is what I'm trying to prevent.

Goonie2 wrote:@andyP Drive passwords are *not* meant as a prevention to boot at all by unauthed users (that's what the other BIOS password is good for). Drive passwords are meant to prevent accessing one specific drive (the one with the password) by unauthed users. Can you tell me how to remove the internal drive in software (BIOS), without having to physically open the notebook?

I'm extremely sorry that my answer wasn't the one you were looking for, but unfortunately that's how it works. I have 2 drives in all of the notebooks in my signature, each of the drives has password protection. It is not possible to get past the password prompt without entering the valid password. You can exclude the drive from the boot sequence if you want, but it's presence as a password protected drive will also provoke the need to enter the password.

Yes you can remove the drive, boot to other media, and then re-insert the drive. Windows will notice that hardware has been added, but the drive will not be accessable untill the system is hibernated or shut down, then restarted and the correct password entered.