Enabling ATA Security on a Self-Encrypting SSD

Recently I purchased a Samsung 840 Pro SSD for my frayed old notebook (a Thinkpad X200s). It’s a self-encrypting drive where data is always stored with AES-256 encryption. But first, to benefit from the encryption, I needed to encrypt the underlying encryption keys. One way of doing that is to set an ATA user password for the drive, which is supported by the BIOS of most notebooks.

But there is a problem.

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