PrivateDisk, is it worth it?

[rmendoza]

Hey everyone,

I am a neophyte when it comes to TPs. I just received my T60, and it wants to create a separate drive (partition I suppose) for PrivateDisk, to store encrypted data. Now, I usually don't encrypt anything other than with the normal log on password, which is pretty good and I have memorized. My questions are as follows:

1) Can you create the PrivateDisk drive later? If so, how?

2) Conversely, can you delete the drive later, and if so, how?

3) Lastly, is it easy to use, as in drag and drop or something similar. If you type the password, is it easy to access later or do you have to go through several menus to get to it?

I thank everyone for their input.

[Ken Fox]

Hey everyone,

I am a neophyte when it comes to TPs. I just received my T60, and it wants to create a separate drive (partition I suppose) for PrivateDisk, to store encrypted data. Now, I usually don't encrypt anything other than with the normal log on password, which is pretty good and I have memorized. My questions are as follows:

1) Can you create the PrivateDisk drive later? If so, how?

2) Conversely, can you delete the drive later, and if so, how?

3) Lastly, is it easy to use, as in drag and drop or something similar. If you type the password, is it easy to access later or do you have to go through several menus to get to it?

I thank everyone for their input.

This is part of that bloatware otherwise known as "Client Security Solution," or somesuch. Unless you really need this (and I get the impression that you do not) you will find after a short while that it is a big time waster, a huge PITA, something that slows your system down with its overhead, and finally, something you will not miss for 5 seconds after you uninstall it.

[rmendoza]

Ken,

Thanks for your reply. I later found a very useful post about this topic, and realized that 1, maybe it's a hassle (with which you agree) and 2, that I can always set up later. I thank you for your time.

[DavidR]

So, how does one get rid of it?

[Ken Fox]

So, how does one get rid of it?

You should be able to remove it by using either the Thinkvantage Software Installer (choose "uninstall an installed app.," somthing like that) or Control Panel-> ADD/REMOVE programs, then select "Client Security System." The client sec. system might be listed as "Thinkvantage Client Security System, or simply Client Security System depending on which method of removal you use (or they might be the same, I forget).

Once it is uninstalled you probably will have to reboot. If you don't have any data in there you can let the system do a complete uninstallation including any configuration/setup data.

If you have a fingerprint reader you may want to read some similar threads here if you want to use the FP reader after the CSS uninstall.

By the way, under "Drivers" in your C: directory you will find installer packages that take up oodles of space. The directories with mixed numeric/alphabet soup names can be deleted whether or not you have installed the particular Lenovo applications. If they are already installed, you don't need the installer packages, and if you don't have them installed you can always download them again at a later time. Don't delete the two text files in this directory as they are needed by the Software installer program.

[stef-n]

Instead of starting a new thread for my question I'll join this thread, I hope that's OK since it's kind of related.

I like the idea of the PDisk since I'm an inventor who wants my ideas to be safe even if I'd lose my laptop when I'm away somewhere. I have allocated a 1 GB space for my PDisk, so that it'll have the space for my documents and some Powerpoint presentations and media files that go with it. The thing is that when I go into the Client security solution and choose "protect data" (it's in swedish on my computer but that's what it means anyway) it takes two minutes just to display information about the PDisk (Z: ), and when I mount it it takes another five minutes. Is that normal? I understand that it takes some time to decrypt the drive, but five minutes for one gig? Is there any way to just decrypt the file that I need from the PDisk? I guess that should be faster.

I have searched the forums for more information about this but haven't found any. Maybe I suck at searching, or maybe this hasn't been discussed before, I don't know...

[EDIT] Those timings mean that it takes all the processing power of the computer, which makes it pretty hard to do anything else meanwhile. I know I should install one more gig of ram to make it dual-channel, and I'll do that soon, but it's still really annoying.