Haswell Mobo with ATA Password?

[alexik01]

Does anyone know which, if any 1150 motherboards support an ATA password (also called HDD password)? The ability to set an ATA password would allow one to use the built-in encryption feature of some SSDs.

I cannot find any information about desktop motherboards supporting this feature. I would prefer the ability to set the security mode as well as the master/user password. Information about these aspects of the ATA password can be found here. I can set these parameters with my Thinkpad, but if the motherboard doesn't allow you to set them, it might overwrite my settings. It seems as if only business laptops support ATA passwords.

Looking at motherboard manuals, I can only seem to find the option of a BIOS password and not an ATA password. Even when the manual says the password is required for boot, it does not appear to be an ATA password. For example, from a Gigabyte manual:

Security Option
Specifies whether a password is required every time the system boots, or only when you enter BIOS Setup. After configuring this item, set the password(s) under the Administrator Password/User Password item.
-Setup A password is only required for entering the BIOS Setup program.
-System A password is required for booting the system and for entering the BIOS Setup program. (Default)

If the password is at all used for the BIOS, it is stored unencrypted and therefor insecure.

With self encrypting SSDs this seems like a very useful feature. ATA passwords have been around since the ATA-3 specification which came out over 15 years ago!

Has anyone used the feature? Does anyone have any information about a Haswell motherboard that supports it? Thanks.