I figure that this is probably the best place to ask a few questions concerning exactly how Hardware based disk encryption works, and data recovery off drives with hardware based disk encryption enabled.

A) How do you get by an HBDE pre-boot authentication screen when a drive PCB is damaged? Will a ROM/PCB swap even work with these drives? Imaging a drive with HBDE enabled seems to be impossible due to the drive firmware blocking access to everything besides the pre-boot partition .. is there a way around this?

B) Is there an easy way to easily wipe out all of the encryption info/reset the firmware on a Seagate Momentus ST9320413AS or Hitachi HTS725032A9A365(even if the data is lost, that is ok .. the problem is with the drives doing stupid and being unable to be fully uninitialized, or initialized, nothing helps, not even a full format / windows install).

C) Is the pre boot partition information held on the system area of the hard drive, or is it held on a chip on the PCB?

D) Any way to crack/retrieve lost passwords / encryption keys on HBDE enabled drives? I doubt there is a good way, but well, ATA passwords are easy to crack so who knows.

E) How do you go about uninitializing HBDE enabled drives when they are damaged and do not want to come up in windows well, or need to constantly be power cycled due to faults that cause them to stop responding?

Of course, any links you might have to exactly how HBDE works and WAVE System's implementation of the Embassy Trust Suite is appreciated.