Windows 10: Bitlocker turned itself off, Samsung Magician Says Encryption enabled

Getting h/w encryption on my laptop has been a bit of a nightmare, but I thought I had it working.... Here is what I did:

• Installed M.2 Samsung 850 evo drive
• Installed samsung magician, and set Encryption to Ready to Enable.
• Removed existing HDD
• Ran samsung secure erase from DVD.
• Installed Win10
• Installed Samsung Magician (It said Encryption enabled, finally!)
• Turned on Bitlocker. It did not prompt me for how much of the drive to encrypt, which (I was told) means that it is using hardware encryption of the drive.
• Added the HDD back.
• Updated all my drivers to latest versions for my laptop (Asus GL552VW), including Intel RST drivers (14.x)

After doing all that I just noticed that BitLocker is turned off on my C: drive (the m.2 drive)! I looked in Magician and it still says Encryption is enabled. So I went into Bitlocker to turn it on again for the drive. But now it is prompting me to encrypt used space, or whole disk, which means it isn't using h/w encryption.

What am I doing wrong here? Do I need to enable Secure Boot in BIOS? I have read that the Intel RST drivers can cause problems, but I thought that was only with older versions? Is IRST still an problem?

Edit: When I look in the Disk Management took, I see the C: partition of Disk 1 says: NTFS(Bitlocker Encrypted)., But in Bitlocker Drive Encryption tool it says it is off. Manage-BDE -status c: says that there is no encryption. Really confused now.

:)

 

BitLocker problem on Windows 10 - mounted Windows doesn't recognize drive is encrypted

I have a strange problem with Windows 10 Pro and can't find any similar reportings. I have a new HP Envy x360 (15-w103na) laptop with built in TPM, and installed a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD drive. I have set BitLocker up with hardware encryption (eDrive, SED)
via the Samsung Magician tool, then secure wiping the disk, then installing Windows clean and enabling BitLocker.

The odd thing is that as soon as the drive is encrypted and restarted, within Windows BitLocker shows the drive as not encrypted, both GUI and through manage-bde. But if I boot off a USB stick and use the command prompt, I can see it is encrypted with hardware
encryption, and I can use the command line tools to decrypt it using the recovery key.

The problem isn't just that I can't manage BitLocker from within Windows, it seems to cause an issue waking from sleep. On wake the machine either freezes, or BSODs with KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR. I suspect the drive maybe isn't accessible after standby.
However hibernating works fine.

Any ideas?

 

Do I have hard drive encryption on my machine. How do I check

Hi Marty.

If you're currently using Windows 10 Pro, you can check the drive encrypt status by using BitLocker.

On Control Panel (Change view by to Large Icons), click BitLocker Drive Encryption.

If you have enabled Drive Encryption, it should say that "Bitlocker is turned on on this drive, or similar words"

 

There are a list of requirements for hardware based encryption here - doesn't look like secure boot is required: How to Enable BitLocker Hardware Encryption with SSDs Helge Klein

I only use bitlocker with software based encryption though so can't add to what they say I'm afraid but some of the comments look interesting.

 

Thanks. I used that guide to get to where I am.... Man I really don't want to have to reinstall windows....

 

The software based encryption only reduces performance by a couple of percent (I don't honestly notice it).

I can't answer your question though - hopefully some who uses it can. Sorry about that.

 

I just read some of the comments from the sight you sent me. It seems that the RST drivers may be breaking bitlocker again maybe.

 

I can confirm the problem is IRST drivers. Just did a clean install, enabled bitlocker (h/w encryption was detected). As soon as I installed the IRST drivers and rebooted BL was turned off. When I went turn on BL again, I got the software encryption prompt. So I guess for now I'll live without the IRST drivers.

Intel doesn't seem to really care:
Intel RST BitLocker eDrive Win10 conflicts |Intel Communities

 

That's an interesting link, thanks - I'll try to remember it in case I get new SSD...

I guess you could consider using storage spaces if you want a sort of software RAID and Intel RST doesn't work with bitlocker....