This drive was Secure Erased in a Windows laptop that had been booted with Parted Magic. I'm told the Erase mode chosen was supposed to have written zeros to the drive.
However,now, when trying to install an OS to the drive, it asks for a password and won't go further without it.
I've tried many passwords but none work.
Is it possible that I could insert the drive in a Linux system and unlock the SSD with a suitable Linux app?
I'm basically a Windows guy and haven't had much to do with Linux, but I do have Ubuntu Mate 18.04 running on a spare workshop computer.
Thanks for reading this, if you can help I'd be grateful for advice.

AFAIK there's no such thing as locking the drive itself. Only the data on it can be locked/encrypted.

Please tell us more about "when trying to install an OS to the drive, it asks for a password and won't go further without it". There's some crucial information missing here.
I have no idea what exactly you're doing there and what is asking for a password. Probably not the drive.

And yes, you can "nuke" a drive with dd, i.e. deleting its MBR and making it appear to be without data.
But at this point I'm not sure that is required.

BTW, Windows calls partitions drives, which is utter nonsense.
In Linux, "drive" refers to a physical device, which might or might not contain partitions.

Yes there are hard drive passwords. To erase a drive using the built in ata command via hdparm you must set a password which once erased is reset back to null. I assume parted magic uses hdparm.

There are a few caveats when performing a secure erase command so we don't know if the the erasing process completely successfully.

There are two passwords a user and master. If the master is still set to its default then there are various ways to try to fix but that involves some hacking and not allowed to discuss that here.

Otherwise the drive is a paperweight.


https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php..._cell_clearing

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ondoho and Michaelk: Much thanks for the tips. I'll come back when I've investigated the situation further.