Old password protected laptop drive

[Fred Cisin]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2009, Alexandre Souza wrote:
>     As far as I know, the ATA password is unbreakable. It is stored on the
> platters AND the controller. So if you change controllers it would not work.

It may not be PRACTICAL or FEASABLE to break it, but for enough money, it
could be done.  One way would be to design and build a replacement
controller that doesn't CARE whether there is a password long enough to
overwrite the password on the drive with the hash of a known password.