BRANDING A COMMODITY DRIVE

1 . A computer implemented method for branding a commodity drive, comprising:

reading a unique identifier from a drive;

partitioning the drive into a first partition and a second partition;

combining the unique identifier with a secret to form an encoded value; and

writing the encoded value to the first partition.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first partition is hidden.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising loading an operating system image on the second partition.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the secret is a private cryptographic key with an associated public cryptographic key; and wherein combining the unique identifier with the secret to form an encoded value is performed using public key cryptography such that the unique identifier may be obtained from the encoded value using the public cryptographic key.

5 . A computer implemented method for validating a branded commodity drive, comprising:

reading a unique identifier from a drive;

reading an encoded value from a partition on the drive; and

validating the encoded value by determining whether that the encoded value was generated based at least in part on the unique identifier.

6 . The method of claim 5 , further comprising, after determining that the encoded value was generated based at least in part on the unique identifier, booting an operating system from a second partition on the drive.

7 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of validating the encoded value includes combining the encoded value with a public cryptographic key to generate a decoded value and comparing the decoded value to the unique identifier.

8 . A tangible computer readable medium, comprising:

a memory storing a unique identifier;

a first partition storing an encoded value representing the combination of the unique identifier and a secret value; and

a second partition storing an operating system.

9 . The medium of claim 8 where in the encoded value may be decoded using a public value to generate a decoded value equal to the unique identifier.