Allow Windows 8 Bitlocker to manage unlocking of hardware encrypted drives

WD External Drives External Drives
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Since Windows 8 will recognize and manage the unlocking of hardware encrypted drives automatically via Bitlocker (See  Encrypted Hard Drive ), Western Digitial should produce and market drives that actually take advantage of this new security feature. The problems with using WD SmartWare is that it only backs up data, it can not be used to create a complete system image, and Windows recovery will not be able to boot to the locked drive. Using Bitlocker solves all of these problems. I would have bought several of the new My Passport Ultra drives if they supported this feature (working seamlessly with Windows 8 Bitlocker). Actually I would like to see some of Western Digital’s internal hard drives supporting hardware encryption with Bitlocker unlocking as well. The TGC OPAL 2.0 specification seems to address this functionality (See Opal 1.0 vs Opal 2.0 Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) FAQ ) as does the Microsoft eDrive specification.