HDD GURU FORUMS

Hello,

I own a laptop Asus K56CA. Shortly after I bought it, I swapped out 5400rpm drive for a Samsung SSD 840. I’ve set up passwords: BIOS Administrator and User; also Master and User HDD Password.
Now, the operating system on my laptop got corrupted few days ago and I need to migrate Windows 8 from the original Hitachi 5400rpm drive to my Samsung SSD 840 (as I did it the first time).

To do this I need to remove the SSD 840 and put back the Hitachi drive into the laptop. The SSD must be unlocked, though.
When I’m in BIOS to unlock it I can't change anything except the User passwords (BIOS and HDD). When I try removing the Master HDD password, it says, “Password can’t be cleared in User Mode”, even though, it also is written in BIOS that if I get into the setup the user will have Administrator rights.

I’ve taken few images of the BIOS and I’m attaching to this post.

Please, if anyone can help me with a way I should approach this problem, I’d really appreciate it.

PS. It’s my laptop and the Samsung SSD. I bought them on Amazon, so I’ve got that documented online, and in paper. I also have all the required passwords.

I think what this message is referring to is that you used a "User" password to enter BIOS settings and not the "Admin" password. I don't think that this issue is related to the password on SSD. Try entering BIOS settings as Admin and disabling security, it should work.

Indeed, being unable to get into BIOS Administrator Level is probably the main reason why I can't unlock the SSD. I'm going to change tagging for my post.