What is a host protected area (HPA)?

The Host Protected Area (HPA) as defined is a reserved area on a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). It was designed to store information in such a way that it cannot be easily modified, changed, or accessed by the user, BIOS, or the OS. This area can contain information ranging from HDD utilities, to diagnostic tools, as well as boot sector code. 

Some data sanitization standards include the HPA as a "user accessible" area that needs to be be removed/erased in order to comply with the standard. The thought process behind this requirement is that the HPA could potentially contain some kind of remnant data, and therefore should be removed in order to ensure that all of the potentially "user accessible areas" are available for erasure. 

The Verity Eradication Software is designed to detect and delete the HPA, but in the rare instance that it is unable to do so, the software will document the condition in the log files and reporting generated as a result of the eradication session.

Versions: v1.0.1