Password Protection if stolen

what kind of password protection can i put in my e1405 just in case somebody stole it. i saw many password prtections in bios but i dont know which one to pick in order to make it unusable if stolen and my information stays safe. If its bios passwords can they be deleted by removing the bios battery..?

 

I think (I’m not sure) you can’t reset BIOS password in new Dell notebooks without consulting DELL. But that doesn’t mean your data is safe. Because, anyone can take out the hard drive and use it with a different PC. Therefore, if you are concerned about the security of your data, then you will have to use encryption.

 

If ur planning to use vista there is bitlocker encryption

 

--------------> truecrypt

 

Also dell laptops (and many others) have the option for a hard drive password. Use with care though. If you forget it your are SOL. The thing is though you are prompted for a password to even unlock the drive. If they move the drive to another laptop then the password will still be requested. There are NO master passwords for hard drive password locks (unlike bios passwords where there tends to be one or two).

 

trucrypt is great

 

True. But how many thiefs are willing to go through all that. They risk ruining the controller in the process anyways. Also they have the find the exact same model which means either they had to of stolen or need to steal one. The chance that someone would be willing to go through all that is pretty remote although I guess there is always that one person.

 

How much does TrueCrypt slow your system down?

 

Yes. Excellent product. Unfortunately it doesn't do the entire disk. Not the system part anyways. The OS has to be loaded to mount the partition.

Example: You cannot encrypt the drive on-the-fly and therefore require the thief to decrypt it before even running the data. You would need to create either a new partition or file that would contain the encrypted data.