Topic: hard drive swap on work laptopr = good idea??

[Chris K]

hey  now

the company i work for supplies a dell laptop for me to use FOR WORK PURPOSES. i use it occassionally to track&flac/dithe/etc also.

Our IT department at work has certain security measures placed on the laptops. one of which is a pesky lockout feature where if the computer isnt touched for 10 straight minutes, it locks you out and brings up a login/password screen to get back to the desktop/etc. this "feature" doesnt seem to affect any processes that are ongoing (like flac frontend or dithering) as far as i can tell, but it is annoying to say the least.

i have been considering buying a compatible hard drive to "swap" out of the laptop for my personal use, load it with win2k and use it for recording in my portable home studio, until the time comes when i buy my own laptop.

my concern is this. will the company IT department be able to tell that I have removed the hard drive and put the swaped drive in its place? any other ramifications?

any help/advice would be helpful.

thanks
chris k

[Gedit]

Are you talking about REPLACING the existing drive? If you're replacing the drive, IT is going to have a bird because you'll be removing the drive that I assume has copies of company-owned software on it. I would advise against that.

Plus the lockout/log back in you're referring to is called "Lock Computer" and is either a local or domain-level security policy, and if you have an IT department it's probably domain-level. It does not affect anything running processes, but it means your laptop ibelongs to a Windows domain. Domain membership placces a SID (security ID) on the drive to identify the machine to a domain controller when you log in. Replacing the drive would remove the SID and IT would have to re-join the laptop to the domain, raising some serious questions in the process. If the lockout policy is per machine or per user (ask IT) and not a blanket security policy you could get them to lengthen the time your laptop will wait until it locks.

Finally, it's not your drive (this one was so obviuous I left it for last).

So for three reasons ... 1) company-owned software, 2) domain membership, and 3) it ain't yours ... I advise against swapping out the drive.

I don't really understand why you need the laptop drive. I assume you offload the FLACs or whatever else you have that's personal. Why do you need the drive anyway?

[Chris K]

when i am home i would put my drive in and do my thing.

when i go to work, i put the company drive back in, and do the company thing.

its probably a bad idea

[Gedit]

ok, i see what you mean now. i can just imagine the morning after a show when you're running late and get to work with the wrong drive in the laptop. love to be a fly on the wall for that

technically there's no reason not to do what you describe. ethically it's questionable.

your call.

[Chris K]

the moral dilemna i can live with. its the getting caught part that doesnt appeal to me. 

i dont plan on using the laptop in the field. i just would like to use the laptop with my own drive that is configured for recording/editing audio files that i have already recorded on another device.

so, would my IT department know that i had swapped the drive? this is what i wouldl ike to know.

[Gedit]

without knowing what other security features your IT department uses, it's impossible to say. you also run the risk of voiding a hardware warranty under some circumstances when you remove a drive.

again ... your call ... not a good idea, IMO

[bluegrass_brad]

couldnt you install an OS on an external drive, then just plug it in and boot from it, rather than from the internal?

[poorlyconditioned]

couldnt you install an OS on an external drive, then just plug it in and boot from it, rather than from the internal?

That is what I was going to say.  Simplest if you can keep just your programs and data on the second drive, but if necessary to isolate stuff perfectly, boot off the second drive and keep everyting totally separate.

  Richard

[Chris K]

hmm. i didnt know this was possible. so i could use, say, an external firewire drive to do this? install the os on the firewire drive and boot from it? interesting.

how would you get it to boot from the firewire drive? some keyboard command at startup...or jedi mind trick   

[poorlyconditioned]

couldnt you install an OS on an external drive, then just plug it in and boot from it, rather than from the internal?

That is what I was going to say.  Simplest if you can keep just your programs and data on the second drive, but if necessary to isolate stuff perfectly, boot off the second drive and keep everyting totally separate.

  Richard

I have *not* had any luck getting my laptop (Thinkpad X24) to boot off an external drive, USB or Firewire.  The only thing I can boot off is the internal drive or the IBM-specific USB CDROM they supplied.

New laptops *may* boot off an external drive.  Check it out, do a web search for your machine.  At the very least you could use an external drive to hold you programs and data.

  Richard

[china_rider]

My thinkpad for work has no problem booting off an external USB drive.

I just thought I would throw out there that swapping internal hard drives will most likely void any warranty that your company has well dell for the laptop.

[poorlyconditioned]

My thinkpad for work has no problem booting off an external USB drive.

That's cool.  I'll try mine.  I've got USB1.0 on the laptop and a PCMCIA card with USB2.0.  I tried a USB1.0 CDROM (generic, not IBM brand) and it did not work.  I'll try a drive.  It would be cool to have a completely separate system, eg., if I have to lend out the laptop or something.

  Richard

[china_rider]

My thinkpad for work has no problem booting off an external USB drive.

That's cool.  I'll try mine.  I've got USB1.0 on the laptop and a PCMCIA card with USB2.0.  I tried a USB1.0 CDROM (generic, not IBM brand) and it did not work.  I'll try a drive.  It would be cool to have a completely separate system, eg., if I have to lend out the laptop or something.

  Richard

Make sure you enable boot from USB set as one of the startup options in the bios.  I think I have USB, then CD/DVD, then HD.  I've even been able to boot off my iRiver. :-}

[davepeck]

i bought a personal drive for my work laptop, and have been swapping out the drives for a while now. never had any issues, and of course, i treat the laptop as if it were my own..

I just thought I would throw out there that swapping internal hard drives will most likely void any warranty that your company has well dell for the laptop.

i don't see how. at least with the thinkpads - swapping a hard drive out requires the removal of only one screw. there's really no way to tell if it has ever even been done..

[china_rider]

i bought a personal drive for my work laptop, and have been swapping out the drives for a while now. never had any issues, and of course, i treat the laptop as if it were my own..

I just thought I would throw out there that swapping internal hard drives will most likely void any warranty that your company has well dell for the laptop.

i don't see how. at least with the thinkpads - swapping a hard drive out requires the removal of only one screw. there's really no way to tell if it has ever even been done..

With thinkpads you may be right but the original post was about a dell.  Regarding the thinkpad depending on how much of a pain IBM wanted to be there are boot records stored on the machine that will allow them to check past hardware configurations.  Our contract with IBM allows for the IT department to swap out drives and some other minor eq, but anything major woudl void the warrenty.  Anyway... I was just trying to point out something else to check, I'd hate to see the original poster start swapping out drives, mess something up, then have his job come to him to replace the machine since the waranty is not void.