Self Encrypting Drive Sleep (S3) support

Similar issue with Dell E6420.  To state the obvious, restarting from Hibernate is much slower and more cumbersome than from Sleep.  All configurable settings are set to Sleep first, however all behavior is to Hibernate (indeed the default behavior, before I changed it, was to hibernate when you closed the lid).  The engineering end of our corporate support says that Wave Systems says that the Dell machines lack hardware support for Suspend with the self-encrypting drives and Dell has declined to add that support.  I contacted Wave Systems to confirm this but they have declined to respond (apparently because *I* am not part of the corporate IT organization).  I've searched the Dell fora and this thread is the closest I've come to finding this issue addressed.

So skipping the diagnostics for the moment, my simple question is, can the Dell E6420, running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, with a Seagate Self Encrypting Drive configured to do full disk encryption, ever be put in Sleep mode or will it always go to Hibernate?

Hi papoon4president,

Is Sleep disabled in the start menu?

Since hard drives and their data are vulnerable to theft when a system is in suspend mode it doesn't surprise me it's not an option.  Hibernation is safer but the data can still be accessed by the right person.  I'm not an expert but the reason for a SED is to protect data and suspend mode is a vulnerability.

sflin, you are correct that there is a vulnerability if someone acquires the sleeping laptop (as opposed to a hibernated one), chills the memory to preserve the contents, and then boots to another operating system so they can scan the contents of the memory for encryption keys.  The BIOS doesn't allow alternate boot locations though, so they would have to replace the BIOS (while those chips are cooled or power is maintained) or excise the chips from the motherboard.  Either should be an acceptable risk -- in the sense that I should have the option of accepting the risk if I think it is appropriate to my situation.  To date I have been unable to find a way to accept that risk.

Start Menu offers choice of Sleep, Hibernate, Logoff, Shutdown, Lock, and Restart.  Though if you choose Sleep, you hibernate.  Power options (images attached) all suggest laptop should be happy to sleep.  But it's all hibernation all the time.  At least it no longer hibernates when I close the lid...

Well, you can consider replacing your existing SED with an SSD with  TCG Opal support.  The Samsung 840 EVO (but not the PRO model as yet) firmware supports configuring the drive for TCG Opal.  

Resume from hibernation would be much faster if you can get that configured properly.