Post #4649859 · Elektrine

2026-09-08 20:34 UTC

Nothing will prevent him from wiping your drive if he has physical access to your device. Sure you can use stuff like Secure Boot with your own custom keys to lock it. Then noone can indeed just boot it. Doesn’t stop that person from removing your drive and plugging it into another pc. Or from just smashing your disk to pieces. The same goes for stuff like a bios password. With physical access you can wipe that, too. It’s just a bit more work (or requires additional tools) than just an USB stick. In short: Yes, you can stop someone from just booting an USB stick and wipe you drive. But it doesn’t matter if he has other ways to do the same. Protection only works as a whole concept, Software won’t help you when physical security allows the device to be stolen. And seriously? Who cares if their stolen is wiped, smashed or drowning on the bottom of the ocean. It’s gone anyway. The actual protection for data is a) backups so you don’t lose them and b) encryption so nobody can read them.

Replies (3)

@Cethin@lemmy.zip 2026-09-09 01:13

Yep. Physical access is equivalent to ownership. The only reasonable thing you can do to protect against it is to prevent access. Given enough time and physical access, any system can be compromised. Encryption is the only good prevention from them reading the data, but it isn’t foolproof, and backups are the only good way to ensure you can access the data after.

Open ##4650645
@starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml 2026-09-09 10:15

why assume the attacker is a guy?

Open ##4654440
@jsnfwlr@lemmy.ml 2026-09-21 02:21

Nothing will prevent him from wiping your drive if he has physical access to your device. Physical access access to internal storage. A locked case to stop tampering with drives and and a password protected BIOS/UEFI with a boot order that skips removable media should prevent OS installation (as long as your motherboard doesn’t have a reset button on the back faceplate too).

Open ##4789571