With a recent version of hdparm. The drive was still in its external enclosure and connected via USB.

Exact actual command i used:

$ sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass passwd /dev/sdd

Then I did

$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdd

And to my horror it was the wrong drive because /dev/sdd and /dev/sdc had switched in the last reboot for some reason (probably because of a bios change that i had made on the last reboot). The hdparm -I showed that it was now in the locked state and the security was high not max.

I'm unable to unlock the drive with the original password "passwd" that i used or with any master passwords that i tried.

like:

WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCW
WDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWDCWD

after i rebooted the drive wouldn't show show very much info and wouldn't show anything related to the security status.

I tried to check it out with Victoria and it was the same thing. No security status. The only way that i can see now that the drive is locked now is if i try and bring it up with WD drive utilities. I also knew it was locked (and not totally bricked) because of the hdparm -I output that i got before i rebooted.

Hopefully one of you guys has seen this issue before or knows a way around this