SSD eDrive support

[URL=][/URL]Hello,

I have an AB350 Gaming ITX/ac and I am using a Samsung 960 Evo Nvme M.2 SSD which, like many other recent SSDs, support Microsoft's "eDrive" (encrypted drive) standard, which allows hardware SSD encryption via Windows Bitlocker.

I, and several other users of Samsung Nvme SSD drives, have discovered that although our SSDs supports eDrive, the encryption can only be enabled when the drive is not the boot drive, eDrive only works when the SSD is used as a data drive. Samsung has responded that they have investigated the issue with motherboard chipset manufacturers and found that there is an issue with the BIOS/UEFI of most motherboards that do not allow them to run eDrive on the boot drive - see the top reply at https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/memoryandstorage/thread-id/188/page/1 , which states:

"After investigating the HW encryption problems from a compatibility point of view, we found this issue can be only be fixed with a BIOS update by the motherboard manufacturers.
Through technical collaboration with one of the major BIOS chipset companies, we have verified that a new BIOS update of the motherboard BIOS works well with the H/W encryption function in our SSD drives. We will continue to verify the solution with the other BIOS chipset companies.
We expect that the motherboard manufacturers will publicize the information of their BIOS updates for a solution."

Microsoft describes the requirements for eDrive at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/encrypted-hard-drive, and the relevant one seems to be
"The computer must be UEFI 2.3.1 based and have the EFI_STORAGE_SECURITY_COMMAND_PROTOCOL defined. (This protocol is used to allow programs running in the EFI boot services environment to send security protocol commands to the drive)."

After reading around on various forums this seems to mean that the BIOS/UEFI needs to support an "ATA password" (i.e., not the passwords that are currently available in the bios for e.g. my motherboard).

From what I have read, I understand that motherboard manufacturers in the past might have been reluctant to enable this feature because people can make their data completely inaccessible if they forget this password, but surely this setting can then e.g. be hidden behind several submenus and with appropriate warnings in the BIOS, like it has been done with the overclocking options in the recent BIOS:es?

Has anyone else already been in touch with Asrock about this? Or is the "ATA password" already actually enabled on some of Asrock's motherboards?


Edited by Squidder - 22 Sep 2018 at 4:50pm

Thank you, xhue.
I've opened a ticket with them already, we'll see how that goes.

I'm trying to be optimistic for the time being though, since e.g. the Fatal1ty H97 recently had a BIOS update to "support HDD password", which sounds quite a bit like what I'm after.

Just an update for those interested: after sending a slightly edited version of my OP above to Asrock's Support Request page, I received an email with an updated bios (4.70A instead of the official 4.70), presumably with the ATA password feature enabled (I'm not flashing right now, for various reasons, so I cannot confirm 100%).
So, although I would prefer to receive it via official channels (especially if BIOS updates are frequent), I cannot complain about a two-working-day delivery.