Bob, how do you figure hdparm would show the password? -I? That just displays model, version, revision and some geometry related statistics by querying the drive's firmware. It's not going to show something like a password string that's been hidden in an area that inaccessable by normal means. (which wouldn't likely be plain text anyway). -L? (doorlock flag) That's just for certain removable drives so the cartridge can be ejected if it doesn't get properly unmounted. Just wondering which option you're thinking of here when you said that (or did you read something that led you to believe hdparm could help with this?)

You might be able to do a raw copy using dd, and output it to a file or another device for data recovery purposes. If you could hook up the laptop hard drive in a machine where you could access it from Linux and dump it to another media.

Essentially what the data recovery service is somehow doing is, a raw copy to some intermediate form where they can edit, then a raw copy back again.