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I'm about to setup a Samsung 840 EVO SSD as the system drive with Windows 8.1 Pro, attached to an Asus P8Z68-V Pro mobo (which doesn't have a TPM). I'll also attach a Western Digital Black HDD for extra storage (no hardware encryption). I know I can enable Bitlocker without the TPM by editting group policy settings.

1st question: Without the TPM, will it still enable Samsung's hardware encryption, or will it be software encryption only? And is the answer conditional upon using Samsung Magician?

2nd question: Assuming I can enable the hardware encryption on the SSD via Bitlocker, will it then use software encryption when writing to the HDD? Is Bitlocker smart enough for that? :p

BellyItcher
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1 Answers1

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Q1: To encrypt your Samsung 840 Evo through built-in hardware encryption you need motherboard which has support for Self Encrypting Drives (SED) and enabled HDD password in BIOS (Admin password for BIOS should be set earlier). There is no need for TPM as HDD password is stored on drive. After procedure you can check Samsung Magician if encryption is enabled.
You can also check this thread for some additional information.

Q2: BitLocker has no relation with hardware encryption so far. It can use TPM to store encryption keys, which are automatically loaded on machine boot, so in that case remember to set power-on password or Windows password.

Community
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Jarek
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