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Well Samsung appear not to mention that in order to use FDE on their 850 Pro that you either need a motherboard that allows a password to be set for the drive or you need other software for it. That is unless you use Windows 8 and have Bitlocker.
So can anyone recommend any motherboards that allow me to take advantage of FDE? My Asus P8P67 Pro doesn't have the option for anything but a standard BIOS password.
Many thanks,
Paul.
Intel desktop motherboards apparently do have the hard disk password option, link.
Personally I have actually never seen the feature on a non-laptop motherboard before.
-duplicate-
So basically Samsung are completely mismarketing their products. As I can't use my drive in FDE mode which is why I bought it.
They do seem to have the relevant information on their site: http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...tepaper06.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by probedb
All data written to the Samsung ranges are encrypted at the NAND level. If you don't have the ability to set a password on your motherboard though, it's just an open door. It doesn't change the fact that the data is encrypted on the NAND.
I know that's not particularly useful if your motherboard can't set a password on the drive, but that ability is firmly in the realm of your motherboard manufacturer.
FDE has to be done before the OS level. Otherwise you end up in a situation of not being able to boot from it as it can't read / write to it - not much use for booting. There are other issues for a non-boot drive too, certainly if the encryption is being done on the drivers controler, although you can get around some of these.Quote:
AES encryption is always active on an 840 or 840 Pro Series SSD. In order to benefit from the encryption feature, however, the user must enable an ATA password to limit access to the data. Failure to do so will render AES-encryption ineffective – akin to having a safe but leaving the door wide open. To set an ATA password, simply access the BIOS, navigate to the “Security” menu, enable “Password on boot” and set an “HDD Password.” Administrators also have the option of setting a “Master Password,” which can allow a lost user password (“HDD Password) to be recovered. The “Master Password” may also be used to unlock and/or erase the drive (depending on the settings), effectively destroying, and thus protecting, the data but allowing the drive to be reused. The setup procedure may differ slightly depending on the BIOS version installed on a particular machine. It is best to consult the user manual if there is any confusion.
I don't think Samsung are being misleading here, it's just the way FDE works on all sane designs. If not, your encryption keys that are stored on the device and not encrypted with the user password. This means the key is stored unencrypted on the drive....along with the encrypted data.....yeah, not a smart idea :(
Fire off an email to your motherboard manufacturer. Depending on your BIOS, you can even mod it in yourself. For example: http://vxlabs.com/2012/11/28/adding-...os-to-amibios/
I understand how they work, I just think the marketing isn't very clear at all. The link you point to is their general paper about it but you won't find that on websites where you buy the drive from, they'll just mention encryption.
It's a pity, you'd think mobo manufacturers and drive manufacturers would want to add it as a feature as surely it doesn't take much doing and it's something else to add to their list of features :)
The drive is faster than my old Vertex 3 but I'm guessing I'll probably have to wait until Windows 10 until I get to use encryption as I'm giving 8.1 a miss.
Asus don't seem to do any mobos with the feature from what I can tell looking at their manuals, it's unfortunate as they've always been my favourite.
Thanks for the link I'll see what it says :)
I got the answer from someone on another forum in case anyone was wondering.
As there's Admin and User passwords on mobos these days, the User password is actually the same thing as the HDD password. Who knew?! It still means I need to upgrade to make use of the feature but any excuse to do so is useful ;)
Did you find out which new boards support this? I cant say Ive seen mention of it in mb advertising for a while now.
See my last comment. I believe that to be the case and most new mobos should support multiple users in the BIOS :)