Dell business notebook ate my hdd password!

He stated he has a Kingston V(+) Gen 2 which does use a toshiba branded JMicron JMF618 controller

 

will try, thanks

 

happy to report an e6400 solved my problem; p/w recognized and removed

 

Good to hear.

 

Just a quick extra report:

- I had this same problem on Dell M6500, using a Kingston HyperX SSD.

I set my password to my usual 19 char password, and after rebooting was unable to log in.

Based on this fine thread, I was able to recover, by entering the first 8 characters during the POST screen.

This took me a while to figure out, as I was trying to reset the password from within the BIOS interface with the drive locked. While the BIOS correctly showed the password to be set, it did not accept any password (neither the full, nor the 8-char version) while the drive was locked, but gives no clear indication of this.

I then rebooted, and tried the password one char at a time in the POST screen (which requires full reboot cycle every three tries), and at 8 chars, I was able to unlock the drive, go to bios, and remove the password.

Just wanted to leave this here for google to pick up, in case others end up in the same situation as me.