Setting up and updating the preboot image

The second step of setting up a drive in Standard and Premium versions is to set up the pre-boot image. The pre-boot image is a small operating system image with Opal Lock embedded in it that can be written onto a drive’s shadow MBR. When a drive is locked, the contents of the drive are encrypted and inaccessible, except for its shadow MBR. When booting into a locked drive with the pre-boot image written, the system will boot into the pre-boot image. Upon booting into the pre-boot image, the embedded Opal Lock application will load and can be used to unlock the drive. After unlocking the drive, the drive’s contents can be accessed by rebooting the system. When a new version of Opal Lock becomes available, it is recommended that Update Pre-boot Image is used to write the latest version of the pre-boot image onto your drives that support the shadow MBR. WARNING: Writing the pre-boot image to a drive can take up to 15 minutes. Do not power down the system while the pre-boot image is being written, otherwise the image will not be written, and the drive will be locked with no way of unlocking itself internally. WARNING: Some TCG versions do not support the shadow MBR. If your drive does not support MBR shadowing, then it is not possible for the pre-boot image to be set up on the drive. The only ways to unlock a drive without a shadow MBR are either using Opal Lock installed on another drive to unlock it, using another drive’s pre-boot image, or using the pre-boot image installed on a Bootable USB. (see section 4.2.4). WARNING: It is essential that a way to unlock the drive is set up immediately. If a drive is locked without any way for unlocking it, then the drive will be in an unusable state and all of its data will be lost if the drive becomes locked.