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September 22nd, 2018 11:00
NVMe PCIe Hardware Encryption (HE)
Hello, I currently have a SAMSUNG 850 EVO (sata3) and Class 0 hardware encryption works perfectly. I plan to upgrade with SAMSUNG 970 EVO (NVMe PCIe) and looking around at forums, I read that NVMe is not supported for Class 0 harware encryption. Encryption is very important for me and specifically Hardware Encryption , since I cannot use Bitlocker for software encryption (I have Windows 10 Home Edition). I know can use other software encryption applications such as VeraCrypt, but obviously Hardware Encryption is my goal for known reasons already discussed on other similar topics
Therefore,
1. Is it correct that NVMe Hardware Encryption still not supported in latest BIOS update (1.11) ?
2. If it not supported, is there any other way to have Hardware Encryption on my new SAMSUNG 970 NVMe?
3. If there is not any other way, does DELL plan in the near future to update its BIOS so it can support it?
thank you for your quick replies/comments/suggestions
rgds
jphughan
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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September 22nd, 2018 15:00
1. Correct that it's still not supported.
2. No other way to use it if the system doesn't offer support for it, since the system has to know how to prompt the user to supply information to decrypt the drive in order to start accessing its contents.
3. No ETA shared anywhere, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
I personally consider the Pro versions of Windows worth the extra cost purely for BitLocker, RDP host, and Hyper-V, but of course that varies from person to person. You also get the option to defer updating to new releases of Windows 10 for a few months, which is handy for avoiding the early bugs. And in case you weren't aware, if you buy an upgrade, you don't have to do a full reinstall. It's literally just 1-2 quick reboots without any big software installations, and all of a sudden you're running Pro. But if you don't want to pay to upgrade or use VeraCrypt, then you're basically stuck.
Also note that hardware encryption has its pitfalls, as I just recently discovered myself. I had a friend with a Latitude E7440 and he had installed a Samsung 850 Evo and enabled hardware encryption via HDD password. His system died, so he brought his SSD to me to install in my own system (an XPS 15 9530) to recover the data. I installed it internally in my system and it prompted for an HDD password at boot as expected, but even though my friend was entering the correct password, it was never accepted -- and yes he knew it was the correct password because he'd been entering it every day for years, and we even tried other keyboards. I ended up borrowing my mother-in-law's PC since she also had a Latitude E7440, and when I installed it in that system, the password worked fine. I figured that HDD passwords were an industry standard, but apparently not. If I hadn't had access to another identical system, my friend would apparently have had to either pay to buy another Latitude E7440 to recover his data or else write off his data. That wouldn't happen with something like BitLocker, for what it's worth.