Originally, I want to encrypt my drive with BitLocker. But the problem is BitLocker was using Software-based Encryption rather than Hardware-based (checked using “manage-bde -status” command). The drive I’ve been using is a Western Digital PC SN730 SDBQNTY-512G-1001, this model is said to be the SED (Self-encrypting Drive) model according to this product brief from the official site.
The problem is to use hardware-based encryption with BitLocker, the drive needs to be an IEEE1667 or a Microsoft eDrive which currently, I have no idea how to check.
Another drive specification I found is the TCG Opal 2.0, this one can be checked using the UEFI Opal Tools and this drive does support Opal 2.0.
Other drive manufacture like Samsung and Crucial seem to have their own software to turn on Opal/IEEE1667 for encryption but the WD Security/Utilities app that Western Digital provided, only work on portable/removable drive. The WD Dashboard app only show that the Drive Security status is “Frozen” and I have no further information.
So in conclusion, how can I know that my drive have the IEEE1667 standard and how can I enable/use it?
Consumer class disks and SSD do not have hardware encryption. Bitlocker has good CPU support so the overhead is negligible.
Well, I know that with newer CPUs, the speed slowdown is neglectable but I still want to use some sort of hardware encryption anyway. As I mentioned earlier, I used the “UEFIOpalTools” to check and my drive does support TCG Opal 2 so do you know how to use that?
Like I said consumer hardware including laptops etc all use Windows professional and bitlocker is very secure. It is automatically activated with a fresh install of Windows 11. Save your key to a USB stick then move it to your MSFT cloud storage.
