If you ever use Linux to do a secure erase of a hard drive and it fails to complete, the drive will show as password protected and the LBA sectors will not be accessible. Here is the command to disable the drive's security.
>sudo hdparm --security-disable xxxx /dev/sd?
Note: sd? = needs to be changed to the drive you are wishing to unlock, such as /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc
If you want to check the status of a drive with hdparm, the command is
>sudo hdparm -i /dev/sd?