Re: securely wiping drives

> After the erase, the password is gone so no worries there.  It's a 
> good idea to set the password because a lot of firmwares/bioses will 
> freeze the drive security settings after boot without one (Lenovo, 
> Dell, HP to name a few).  If you get an I/O error running hdparm 
> commands, then do hdparm -I and look for the text "        frozen" 
> which means your bios is freezing that functionality on the hard drive 
> immediately after boot.