ThinkPad X201 - Hard Drive1 Password - no reset possible

Question

Hello outside,
this post is going to be longish but I need to give as much information as possible to get your help.
We bought a bunch of lenovo X201 notebooks plus additional FDE drives (Hitachi, model name is HTS723225L9SA61, delivered through lenovo) to replace the builtin non-FDE ones. After performing some tests on one of those FDE drives I need to erase the master password of the Hitachi FDE drive. The drive contains just some test data, so everything can be erased/overwritten. AFAIR, this password is set by a SATA command, so I expected it to be changed by any tool that is capable of applying SATA commands like hdparm. I looked for datasheets on Hitachi harddrives and found a lot of SATA commands that can be applied to the drives. I just do not know how. I tried with hdparm but the valid status is displayed as frozen, therefore the tutorial I found but which I cannot refind here on this forum cannot be concluded. It reads as i fit allowed to overwrite the Master password at the end. I read and followed several forum threads such as http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Can-t-remove-HDD-password/m-p/241677 and http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/R-and-L-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Hard-Disk-Password-functionality-bug/td-p... without success. I also tried with Hitachi Tools and external boot media such as Parted Magic/hdparm/smartmontools. With none of them I succeeded, so I am looking for your help.
Expectations
Entering BIOS>Security>Password, setting Hard Disk1 Password to "User+Master" shall prompt the User for his password on powering up the notebook. In case he forgot his password, Master can login and let User set a new password. That way, no foreigner powering on the machine can gain access to the data. He can only erase all data on the drive by setting up a new Master password using special tools. This will only deliver him a bare drive but no business data.
What happened?
Case 1
I ran into the same problem as described in both scenarios of http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/R-and-L-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Hard-Disk-Password-functionality-bug/td-p.... I placed the FDE drive into the notebook, entered the BIOS settings for Security>Password>Hard Disk1 Password and set Master+User password at the same time (there is an option to set them in parallel). The User password can still be changed but my initially (and just once) set Master password is not being accepted when I power on the notebook and hit F1 for the overlying Master password instead of the User password. Even right after setting Master+User passwords it was not possible to change the password inside the BIOS or to access the computer by entering the Master password. The password was rejected all the time. Only the User password allows me to gain access to the system. Any typing errors are excluded as I used a very simple password for the start (just capitals and a number) while I was watching every character to appear as a filled box on the screen and both passwords (first Master password plus confirmation password) were of the same length and for sure of the same characters (otherwise BIOS had to reject but not accept this as the initial password).
Hitachi offers some tools at http://hitachigst.com/support/downloads/ which did not help me either (I had to run them on an X61 due to not supported ICH9M). Feature Tool does not offer operations to push SATA commands to the drive. So I used Hitachi Drive Fitness Test to perform a full write operation to the disk. This took several hours and I did that because I was hoping to be able to set new User+Master passwords afterwards. This is not possible as I am still asked for the current Master password. So don't waste your time with that.
Booting off a Linux Live CD using smartmontools does not allow me to push commands to the drive either as the fitting status is set to "frozen".
This is all I found out that can be performed on the drive to regain access to set the Master password. All in all I find this whole procedure very frustrasting. Documentation is incomplete from my POV. The most simple way would be to have a tool for changing the drive's key, losing all the data on it but allowing to reuse the disk. I did not find a dedicated function to do so. At least by overwriting the drive I expected to be able to reset the Master password but I learnt that it just overwrites the data but not the harddrive key.
After having performed the erase operation to the drive the BIOS offered new information for Hard Drive1 Password:
"Current setting: Enabled
Status: In Process
In Process: To complete enrollment, click Start>All>ThinkVantage>Create Recovery Media, and follow instructions
Registered: If password is forgotten, press F12 at power-on password prompt to recover."
I did that (create the bootable media) and set up a USB thumbdrive which was not bootable although the write operation ended successfully. Then I did the same with a bunch of DVD+RW media and ended up on disc 3 in an "unexpected error (rc=9)" for the check at 22% after write to disc operation. In the end, this is just a product recovery disc which allows to reinstall Windows 7 but not to change the hardware password for the disk drive (for sure).
No Supervisor password is set. According to http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=migr-59377 setting one would overwrite the Master password: "Setting a Supervisor password automatically sets the master Hard drive password". The questions are: which one will be the new Master password? The one used as Supervisor password? Will it be possible to disable the Supervisor password afterwards or will it stay on forever same as Hard Disk1 Password settings do? According to http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Can-t-remove-HDD-password/m-p/241677 even setting up a Supervisor password for the first time will ask me for the Master password in case those differ (which should be the general case).
I have no more ideas on what to do. Please give me some input.
Case 2
With a second drive which is not an FDE drive I tried to be more clever. I just chose to set the User password. But doing so no more allows me to place a Master password afterwards. All I can do from now on is change the User password but there is no possibility inside the BIOS nor in any of the Hitachi tools that I found to set a Master password afterwards. The worst thing about that is the fact that this information has _nowhere_ been displayed before setting the password. There _must_ be a warning about this beforehand! This is a real big fault which renders the drive useless. If there is no possibility for the user to fix that I will have to return the drives to the manufacturer because of this fault. What I am mostly missing is documentation. The supplied "lenovo Notebook Computer Hard Disk Drive User's Guide" just contains information on how to physically replace the drive plus some guarantee notes. There is no documentation coming by explaining the process of setting up a User(+Master) password, nor are there _any_ warnings during interaction. Nowhere did I find information on the fact that this operation is irreversible. This is not acceptable.
Once a User password is set, it cannot be removed anymore nor can the option be changed to "User+Master". There is just an option to change the password but not to disable the setting again. As any option inside the BIOS can be changed, this is totally unexpected by any user.
Would flashing the drive's firmware help, definitely?

Answer 1

I read the document now. No possibility to overwrite or remove the harddrive password (case 1) even for accepting to lose all data on it. Also no possibility to remove the User password or set an additional Master password afterwards once you've set the User password (case 2). At least in case 2 this is a definiive product fault that is nowhere stated beforehand, so even as a computer pro you cannot guess that setting this BIOS option will be a one-way ticket. Because of this I will have to return the drive to the manufacturer. Poor documentation, but not on the customer's back. Be careful if you set your Harddrive password.