Recover Your Data from a Locked HDD with Atapwd
This is done when the SED itself is reset. The factory firmware will have a self-test in place after you put it back in. If for some reason you forget the password, the SED will generate a new one, and will re-set the password on its own.
Atapwd - Remover Password De Hdd.zip
You should include any extra time delays because a disk password is set for EVERY hardware boot, at the system BIOS level (rather than simply at the BIOS POST level), and will run even when the computer is powered off. Not only that, it will run even if you don't have the OS installed, at least in the case of a drive the SED was installed on.
Click on the hard drive option in the BIOS menu, highlight the hard drive and click the down arrow in the top right-hand corner. Press Enter. This will open the Hard Drive Setup screen and the Set Password screen will appear.
METHOD #4 This may actually work. There is a website out there that lets you password protect or remove SATA password for a drive. The website also allows you to password protect a drive or lock the entire drive out of the computer but the drive cannot be removed. This may be what your talking about if your on laptop. I don't know if that website/process is updated and if this particular method will work but it did for me. So all I did was find the website http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-smart-crt-password-manager-howto/ and just pluged it into the laptop. Remember you can always just blow the data on the drive.
Also try this method if you have set the drive to password protect it at install and want to remove the password. It will only work on laptops. The DVD writer refuses to open the drive unless the password is removed. The drive is in a format that will allow it to be installed by the DVD writer. This is what the drive looks like after you have disabled the security on the drive.