Hard Disk Drive Password Security Feature

The Hard Disk Drive Password Security feature blocks read and write accesses to the hard disk drive until the correct password is given. Hard Disk Drive Passwords are set in BIOS SETUP and are prompted for during BIOS POST. For convenient support of S3 resume, the system BIOS will automatically unlock drives on resume from S3. Valid password characters are A-Z, a-z, and 0-9. Passwords may be up to 19 characters in length.

The User hard disk drive password, when installed, will be required upon each power-cycle until the Master Key or User hard disk drive password is submitted.

The Master Key hard disk drive password, when installed, will not lock the drive. The Master Key hard disk drive password exists as an unlock override in the event that the User hard disk drive password is forgotten. Only the installation of the User hard disk drive password will cause a hard disk to be locked upon a system power-cycle.

Table 13 shows the effects of setting the Hard Disk Drive Passwords.

Table 13. Master Key and User Hard Drive Password Functions

During every POST, if a User hard disk drive password is set, POST execution will pause with the following prompt to force the user to enter the Master Key or User hard disk drive password:

“Enter Hard Disk Drive Password:”

Upon successful entry of the Master Key or User hard disk drive password, the system will continue with normal POST.

If the hard disk drive password is not correctly entered, the system will go back to the above prompt. The user will have three attempts to correctly enter the hard disk drive password. After the third unsuccessful hard disk drive password attempt, the system will halt with the message:

“Hard Disk Drive Password Entry Error”

A manual power cycle will be required to resume system operation.

NOTE

As implemented on Intel NUC 12 Extreme / Pro X Kit, Hard Disk Drive Password Security is only supported on M.2 ports 1 and 2 on the NUC 12 Extreme / Pro X Compute Element. The passwords are stored on the hard disk drive so if the drive is relocated to another computer that does not support Hard Disk Drive Password Security feature, the drive will not be accessible.