I'm considering purchasing a SSD that has built-in hardware encryption / self-encrypting drive that provides its own full drive encryption.
What can I do to check that the BIOS on my machine will support it?
Background research so far
Research on self-encrypting drives - good article below, but I would need to know if the BIOS can support it: http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Self-encrypting-drives-SED-the-best-kept-secret-in-hard-drive-encryption-security
The BIOS doesn't matter, because this is handled by the software on the "shadow disk" which the BIOS sees when the drive is just powered up and not yet unlocked.
What you need is a BIOS that allows you to set the ATA disk password. This is not the same as the "boot password" or the "setup password". Most modern SSD's have built in on-the-fly FDE but it's only effective if you can set this password. For a very detailed explanation see this post or this discussion on Tom's Hardware.
