Sen No Sen

Heads-up

The German tech magazine c’t has an important article in this regard:

How ATA security functions jeopardize your data

What if an unauthorized party were to lock a hard disk with a password? And what if that party was a virus? Then a set of simple tools won’t suffice to give you access to your data. The options would be to throw the disk away - or place it in the hands of someone who specializes in retrieving data.
(…)
In light of the current state of affairs the ATA Security Feature Set is not much of a security boon, more like a security hole with a fairly large loop that needs to be closed through BIOS updates as soon as possible.