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Added a 2nd SSD on a Lenovo ThinkBook 16p G2 ACH Laptop - Type 20YM, then, after rebooting, it fails to unlock the hard disk pretending it isn't correct.

However, it indeed is the right password, it is the same exact one as for the 1st SSD...

Searching the web for a bit, it seems that Lenovo likes to hash/salt passwords and eventually fails to handle that fact.

If I remove the 2nd SSD, the system can boot again, obviously.

As it's unlikely there's going to be a newer BIOS update for this machine, I am left with a brand new SSD that's unusable.

The SDD drive in question:

Samsung SSD 990 PRO NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 2 Tb MZ-V9P2T0BW

What are my options?

Is there a I can recover it by like doing PSID revert in Samsung Magician software?

Or anything else maybe?

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  • Are you sure the actual SSD was locked instead of just being encrypted? This is the reason I don’t recommend encryption solutions outside of BitLocker and VeraCrypt. I am not exactly sure what your asking, if it was trivial to bypass these security measures, they wouldn’t be helpful. If you only have the new SSD installed. Is the password accepted
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 14, 2023 at 13:32
  • The SSD is not encrypted, I haven't even had the time to use it, I installed it and set the password in the BIOS; then I rebooted and it refused to accept the password.
    – aybe
    Commented Dec 14, 2023 at 14:18
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    I was trying to point out the SSD is usable in any other machine. The problem is the Lenovo firmware. Which is why I encourage not using HDD locking options just firmware passwords, and even then, I perform FDE to protect my devices and data.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 14, 2023 at 14:52
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    Just remove all partitions, then make one or more new partitions. You state there's no data on the drive, so what is the issue?
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Dec 14, 2023 at 17:18

1 Answer 1

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The definitive answer after a few months:

This laptop (and probably a few others) do the following to try pretend being secure:

  • salts the password entered by the user and sends that to the HDD
  • at this point, your initial password is gone, it's been changed
  • if HDD isn't one of their certified parts, it will choke on original password

So, what you end up with is a nice doorstop.

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