Host Protected Areas

[pTd]

Is HxD capable of identifying, editing or clearing HPAs?

[Maël]

There is no special support for it, if Windows doesn't expose it automatically HxD doesn't either. It seems to be rather involved and specific to hardware, IDE and SCSI being different.
If I come across documentation of a clear and reliable way of making it work I might consider implementing this.

[pTd]

Yes it does seem that the BIOS can tamper with these settings without prompting, fortunately mine doesn't. It's only been a problem where I've used an old Windows drive in a non-Windows environment. I've since discovered that Windows has a built-in command line tool diskpart.exe, which can clear access to HPA and DCO areas using the 'CLEAN' parameter. I've also found third party tools to perform a similar function so perhaps it's not something HxD needs to concern itself with.