If drives are freeze locked, Blancco Drive Eraser / Blancco 5 will attempt to remove the locks by power cycling the machine: the screen turns black for few seconds before returning. Depending on boot option used to boot Blancco Drive Eraser / Blancco 5 (see the Booting Options) or the configured erasure process ("Manual", "Semi-automatic" or "Automatic", see the Processes from the user manual), the Freeze lock removal may occur before the GUI starts or right before an erasure process starts. Unfortunately in some hardware configurations the screen might not turn back on ("black screen"), meaning that the freeze lock removal procedure is not properly supported by the machine.
How to handle problematic hardware?
The user will usually face 3 situations with problematic hardware:
- The screen stays black and an erasure process starts in the background: the drive’s light starts
blinking as the drive is being actively erased. In this situation only the screen is missing, if the user wants to monitor the erasure a workaround consists in monitoring it via the Blancco Management Console. After the erasure, the report can also be fetched. Please refer to the Drive Eraser Configuration Tool and the Blancco Management Console user manuals for more information about this feature. - The screen stays black and nothing starts in the background, however the machine is on
(lights are on, fans are working). In this situation the screen is missing but the drives are most likely detected and ready for erasure, if the user wants to start and monitor the erasure a workaround consists in controlling it via the Blancco Management Console. After the erasure, the report can also be fetched. Please refer to the Drive Eraser Configuration Tool and the Blancco Management Console user manuals for more information about this feature. - The screen stays black and the machine is unresponsive (lights are off, fans are not working). In this situation, the Freeze lock removal is most likely paused or has failed. There are three ways to proceed:
- With some old machines, the Freeze lock removal process may be paused because the machine has not got enough time to restart. Try to press any keyboard key (e.g. Enter) or push the machine’s power button for 1 second or so to wake up the machine and restart the software's user interface / begin the erasure (after this, you may end up with a working screen or in the case 1 or 2).
- On other machines, power cycling is a functionality that needs to be turned on. Check from the BIOS/UEFI settings that the machine can be suspended and restarted, the setting may correspond to:
- Enabling the "Suspend-to-RAM" or "S3 mode" functionality.
- Moving the "ACPI Standby State" to "S3".
- Unblocking the "Sleep" or "S3 State" functionality.
- The BIOS on some machines may not support the S3 sleep state. In that case, try upgrading/downgrading the BIOS version to enable S3 support. In case of Lenovo X1 Tablet, BIOS versions 1.57 and higher no longer support the S3 sleep state.
- If the previous does not work, the Freeze lock removal process has likely failed. Next, try to remove the drive from the machine and connect it to a motherboard that doesn’t enforce any Freeze lock (as the Freeze lock itself is an entirely BIOS dependent feature) or that can be suspended and restarted properly.
- Otherwise, unplug either the signal or power cable of the drive. This requires that the
following steps are performed:- Shut down the computer system.
- Unplug the signal cable or four-wire power cable of the drive while leaving the signal cable plugged in. To eliminate the danger of Electro Static Discharge, always ground yourself when removing the power cord. The signal cable is the preferred option and should be attempted first. If the freeze lock remains after attempting the boot with signal cable removed, attempt the boot with the power cord removed. This method is not recommended by Blancco, as the drive may result damaged in the process.
- Power on the system and boot the Blancco software.
- When the software is loading i.e. you see the progress bar, plug the signal/power cord of the drive back in.
Some cases when the Freeze Lock Removal is not mandatory:
Most of the time, users follow a predefined policy to erase their company’s data storage devices. However, depending on the case, removing the freeze locks from the drives can be seen as a good addition and not as a mandatory requirement (i.e. it can be skipped). Some of these cases are listed below:
- The drive has a freeze lock, the machine does not restart after attempting the freeze lock -removal (screen stays black) and the machine cannot be remotely erased.
- The drive is in a good condition (no remapped sectors).
- The drive does not have any hidden area that needs to be removed.
- The drive does not contain sensitive data.
- Secret data often requires purging or sanitizing procedures that may involve the use of firmware based erasure commands which are available only if the drive is not Freeze Locked.
- The user essentially requires erasing the user addressable area of the drive.
- The drive remains under organizational control in which case 'Clear' level erasure is sufficient as per NIST. For more information about NIST 800-88 Clear/Purge levels, see the Drive Eraser User Manual Chapter 12.
Although Blancco Drive Eraser / Blancco 5 attempts to automatically remove the drives' freeze locks whenever detected, the user is given the possibility to prevent this mechanism from being triggered, as described in this article.