VMWare Workstation 10: Emulate a hard disk capable of ATA security features

[PhreakShow]

Hey folks,

I have a QNX 6.5.0 vm which I downloaded pre-setup from QNX. The hard disk is emulated as IDE, setting it to another controller type does not boot the system.

What I try to do: I want to secure a virtual IDE disk with the common ATA passwords, master and user. But querying the virtual hard disk yields a  ATA security featues not supported.

Is there a way to use ATA passwords with vmware workstation?

[dariusd]

Our virtual hard disks do not support the ATA security features (ATA_SECURITY_SET_PASSWORD, ATA_SECURITY_UNLOCK, etc.).

The closest you will be able to achieve using VMware Workstation would be if you were to Encrypt and Restrict a Virtual Machine, although I know it is quite different from what you are specifically asking for.  Depending on your goal, it might help.  (It won't help if you are working on implementing ATA hard disk security features in a guest OS driver, for instance...)

Cheers,

--

Darius

[BFeely]

To emulate would seem trivial, but it should have the restriction that the disk be pre-allocated and warn users that (a) it is intended for development, testing, and demonstration purposes only, (b) they should zero-out the free space of their host drive after the operation completes to at least have some assurance of security, and (c) that VMware, Inc would not be liable for any data leaks.

[PhreakShow]

I am not trying to protect the content of my VM. I want to create a similar environment. I have a BMW headunit which uses secured harddisks, and I want to play with the content of this HDD.

I also want to clone the HDD to an SSD. Seems like I have to go for a native setup.