SSD to support hardware based full disk encryption via BitLocker?

Caledon Ken said:

Have you installed Windows with just the NVMe SSD no other storage (one would think then this must be primary.)

Well, your parsing of that cryptic reply is as good as mine. I bet it's from some guy in India who's just copy-and-pasting it off the pre-written sheet. That's the sad state of affairs with tech support these days. That is why public forum like this one is a million times more helpful.

So going back to your point. It's hard to tell which is the "primary" drive on this board. It has three M.2 slots labeled as:

M2P_32G

M2M_32G

M2Q_32G

and 8 internal SATA ports. I don't have anything plugged into SATA yet.

I was intending to use two NVMe M.2 drives. One is Samsung 970 PRO 512GB as a boot drive C: and then 970 EVO 1TB as a data drive D:. Both are currently plugged into the motherboard.

So I plugged in 970 PRO into M2P_32G slot and 970 EVO into M2M_32G slot.

This is how it looks in the BIOS:




But again, like I said before I already tried the same steps he's suggesting there with the 970 PRO drive. I am messing with 970 EVO now because it doesn't require re-installation of the OS.

I know what they are doing there -- they try to give me something that involves a lot of work, hoping that I would go away. (To do what that Samsung guy suggested would require several hours of work.)
As for taking it back, to be honest, I don't even know who to blame here. Is it the motherboard? Is it the SSD? Why would it not encrypt as drive D? Or is it Windows 10 or some driver that is missing?

Hi,
Another off the wall guess is you might need to raid the 2-m.2 drives then technically they would both be primary

@Caledon Ken: because the drive comes with it. It's a high end drive that was advertised as supporting it, so why not use it? This is kinda like buying a high end car and then discovering that the Bluetooth doesn't work. Sure, you can drive it but would you settle for it? So I guess it's more like a matter of principle.

@ThrashZone: hmmm.... I'm also getting info that hardware encryption does NOT work with RAID.

Thanks. Yes, that's the problem. For me just to get an answer from Samsung tech support takes about 24 hrs. So at this point I'll have to follow what they say (securely erase the drive and reinstall Windows 10.) I bet it won't do a thing....

BTW. Still no answer from Gigabyte, the manufacturer of the motherboard.

Caledon Ken said:

Can I ask why hardware encryption. Yes there is some speed gain but is it that significant?

I'll tell you something for sure - when I get a new PC it will have hardware based encryption so I'm subscribing to this thread.

So what if this is only 5 or 10% (low single digits according to MS) - I'd rather offload that from CPU onto the drive so CPU can do something else (what I've no idea - my processing requirements could be done on an abacus but that is not the point).

I can only add this titbit :

According to the Samsung Tooltip, to get hardware encryption of an OS drive, you have to install a NEW Operating System on it.
Basically, the steps required would be:
1. Plug the OS drive into A DIFFERENT MACHINE (or the same machine if you’re planning to wipe it, but you can’t boot off of the drive yet…)
2. Do the DISKPART cleaning of the SSD.
3. Run Samsung Magician and “Secure Erase” the drive.
4. Change the drive to “Ready to Enable”.
5. Shut down the computer and install the new OS to the drive.
6. After OS comes up, enable BitLocker on the SSD.
7. Done!

@Caledon Ken: yep. Same story.

@lx07: Thanks. I'll try to post here whatever I come up with. Unfortunately I can't really enjoy my new system now without first setting up this full disk encryption thing. Otherwise it's starting over just to do another go on it.

I'll try to follow your list tonight though. I know this thread has grown too long. But I have already tried it (sort of.) When I just built this PC, I installed Win10 on it right away. It authenticated and I set up all the drivers. Then I realized that I need to try to set up hardware based full disk encryption. So I did all the steps you listed above, except for doing DISKPART CLEAN command first. But my assumption was that Samsung Magician should be smart enough to assume that if I'm wiping the drive. Right? But what the hell, I'll try it like you described today (on a different PC.)

Before I do it though, guys, you brought up an interesting point. Let's test how much faster/slower this system is in these three configurations:

1. Win10 Pro, stock install, software based full disk encryption on disk C.

2. Win10 Pro, stock install, hardware based full disk encryption on disk C. (If I succeed setting it up.)

3. Win10 Pro, stock install, no full disk encryption on disk C, just plain vanilla drive.

All of that with the Samsung 970 PRO 512GB NVMe as a boot drive.

I haven't done any benchmarking lately. What's the software to run those benchmarks with?

I'd use AS SSD Benchmark