Hard drive locked, missing hard drive

[asterose]

I have an Acer Aspire ES1-512, x64-based PC laptop running Windows 10 with BIOS Version Insyde Corp. V1.07.

When I tried to boot, it said, "No Bootable Device".  When I used my Recovery USB, it will not Recover saying, "Your hard drive is locked, unlock your hard drive and try again."  I have no idea how to "unlock" my hard drive.  I had a similar problem 6 months ago, and when I ran partdisk, the drives were all visible, I just couldn't access (unlock) the hard drive.  I did so many different things, I don't know what really brought it around again.  THIS time partdisk shows only the DVD drive and the Recovery USB drive, but NO hard drive.

I reset BIOS to its factory defaults, and it shows the hard drive in the boot portion.

HELP!  If you can't help, do you know where to go to get to it?

[Geek-9pm]

Aspire ES1-512 
I think that laptop came with Widows 8.1 and not windows XP.
How old is the laptop? It may be the hard drive no longer works.

The last BIOS revision was four years ago. 
However, that is not likely the issue. I think your hard drive has failed.
If you wish to keep this machine, someday yu will have to get another drive anyway.
Is this the hard drive?
https://www.laptop-hdd.com/80gb-25-acer-aspire-e1-410-e5-731-es1-512-e1-510p-hard-disk-drive.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAnY_jBRDdARIsAIEqpJ1j_Ce7cWG9irwZiUYjYhfU-EnAWivjPbzjZle6eOIs2L5Yx9GNN8IaAtsIEALw_wcB
I am not recommending the above site. It was the first I found in search.
You can get a new drive that will fit from Newegg for a better price.
For just a few dollars more you can increase the capacity a lot.

[Lisa_maree]

Hi

Reading the manual it appears you have :

Password on Boot secures your computer against unauthorized use.

Which appears to set a password on the hard drive itself. The drive won't show if you turn off the password on boot option in the bios which happens when you default the bios. Unfortunately if it is a password on the hard drive and you don't know it, you need to replace the drive. There is no way to recover the data without inputting the password.   

[Geek-9pm]

Lisa_maree,
Thanks for the tip. Windows has a feature in BitLocker that lets yu protect a hard drive. But it is not automatic, as I understand. The owner of the laptop has to set it up and make a USB thing that can recover the password.

So, this leads to the issue of either the owner of the laptop is suffering from memory loss,or the laptop is not really his. The only way to recover the password is with the USB flash crated by BitLocker sometime in the past.
https://hardsoft-support.kayako.com/article/55-how-to-use-bitlocker-drive-encryption-on-windows-10

Windows 10, similar to previous versions, includes BitLocker Drive Encryption, a feature that allows you to use encryption on your PC's hard drive.