BozaCern
asked on
Change disk size
Situation is as follows: our company can purchase laptop disks in sizes of no less than 160 gb and soon no less than 250 GB (if we stick to the original manufacturer "Lenovo"). I would like to reduce the size of the disk that will be identified by the OS,BIOS etc.. so that the users will have less disk space (long story to explain why we want this)
Also please take into consideration that our users are all administrators on their computer and therefore any type of partitioning or hiding of 2nd partiion will not be usefull as they will easly hack it using XP disk manager.
For this reason I need to fool the disk and bios to thinking the disk is actually smaller then it is.
You can also assume the user will not format the entire drive and reinstall the system so that is not a considiration.
I already tried partition magic and the like but in XP if you are admin you can see and alter/delete/format any disk space.
Question:How do I make the disk/bios/OS identify the disk to be of a different size than it realy is?
Please help
Kind regards
Boaz
Also please take into consideration that our users are all administrators on their computer and therefore any type of partitioning or hiding of 2nd partiion will not be usefull as they will easly hack it using XP disk manager.
For this reason I need to fool the disk and bios to thinking the disk is actually smaller then it is.
You can also assume the user will not format the entire drive and reinstall the system so that is not a considiration.
I already tried partition magic and the like but in XP if you are admin you can see and alter/delete/format any disk space.
Question:How do I make the disk/bios/OS identify the disk to be of a different size than it realy is?
Please help
Kind regards
Boaz
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Gary Case
Note: Obviously anyone who knows about Host Protected Areas, and suspects that's what you've done, could use HDAT and remove the HPA (thus making their disk larger). But that's relatively unlikely ... I know many very experienced folks who have never heard of a HPA ... and would have no idea how to remove/modify one. Since this also modifies the size the BIOS reports, it's relatively unlikely the users would even know the disk wasn't that actual size as long as you choose to make it a "normal" disk size [e.g. 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, etc.]
ASKER
Hi Garycase,
I'm looking into this right now.
Thank you ofr your response.
Boaz
I'm looking into this right now.
Thank you ofr your response.
Boaz
ASKER
Hi Gary,
Thanks you for the help. you are right to comment it is a strange reques.. I have been looking for solution for this for 2 month (on and off) and even got price quote from a disk recovery company for a solution to this. They asked for a lot of money. we said no. Any way this does the job perfectly and even doesn't interfere with a full disk encryption software installed after the size changes.
Thanks again.
Boaz
Thanks you for the help. you are right to comment it is a strange reques.. I have been looking for solution for this for 2 month (on and off) and even got price quote from a disk recovery company for a solution to this. They asked for a lot of money. we said no. Any way this does the job perfectly and even doesn't interfere with a full disk encryption software installed after the size changes.
Thanks again.
Boaz