The background is here. In short, an SSD with the “Apacer” brand froze itself into read-only mode, presumably due to reaching a point of poor reliability.

The data on the drive is useless. It was part way through installing linux when it happened. I would like to reverse that switch to make one last write operation (to write a live linux distro), which thereafter can be read-only.

I have heard some speculation that the manufacturer uses password to impose read-only mode. If true, then the password would be in the drive’s firmware. Does anyone know what Apacer uses for this password?